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APPRECIATION    OF 
LITERATURE' 

AND 

AMERICA  IN  LITERATURE 


BY 


GEORGE  EDWARD   WOODBERRY 

n 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT.  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 
1921 


COPYSIGBT,    1903,    BY 

GEORGE    £.    WOODBEKKY 

COPYRIGHT,    1907,    BY 

THE    BAKER    &    TAYLOR    COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT,   I921,  BY 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


CONTENTS 

APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 

I. 

First  Principles,  3 

II. 

Lyrical  Poetry,  21 

III. 

Narrative  Poetry,  39 

IV. 

Dramatic  Poetry,  56 

V. 

Fiction,  75 

VI. 

Other  Prose  Forms,  100 

VII. 

Practical  Suggestions,  116 

AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

I. 

The  Beginnings,  135 

II. 

The  Knickerbocker  Era,  152 

III. 

The  Literary  Age  of  Boston,  169 

IV. 

The  South,  186 

V. 

The  West,  202 

VI. 

The  Achievement,  217 

VII. 

Results  and   Conditions,   227 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE:    AN  ENCYCLOPEDIC 
VIEW,  251 


44C593 


APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 


\ 


I.    »  '»  •      » 


CHAPTER  I 

FIRST  PRINCIPLES 

-Literature  is  an  art  of  expression.  The  material  which 
it  employs  is  experience;  or,  in  other  words,  literature 
is  the  expression  of  life.  Action,  emotion  and  thought 
are  the  three  great  divisions  of  life,  and  constitute  ex- 
perience. Literature  undertakes  to  represent  such  ex- 
perience through  the  medium  of  language,  and  to  bring 
it  home  to  the  understanding  of  the  reader.*^  It  is  obvious 
that  literature  makes  its  appeal  to  the  individual  mind 
and  is  intelligible  only  in  so  far  as  the  individual  is  able 
to  comprehend  its  language  and  interpret  the  experience 
there  embedded. 

A  good  reader  is  an  author's  best  fortune,  for  the 
writer  strives  in  vain  unless  he  be  understood.  The 
reader's  own  experience  is  the  key  to  literature.  It  may 
be  direct  experience,  events  and  passions  personal  to 
himself;  or  it  may  be  indirect,  events  and  passions 
observed  in  the  career  of  others,  or  at  least  learned 
by  report;  but  in  any  case  the  power  to  understand 
indirect  experience,  that  is,  experience  not  one's  own, 
depends  on  the  existence  of  a  common  human  nature  and 
on  the  share  of  it  which  the  reader  has  already  realized 
in  his  own  life  and  self-consciousness. 

It  is  by  sympathy  and  imagination  that  one  enters 
into  the  lives  and  fortunes  of  others;   and  these  two 


',^-      4 V  i  V': 'APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

'j  <;^;i¥ctiItieG,/ 'which  are  the  great  interpretative  powers  of 
literature,  have  richness,  strength  and  scope  in  propor- 
tion to  the  quaHty  and  quantity  of  individual  experience, 
to  the  depth  and  range  of  one's  own  life.  Sympathy 
and  imagination  are  the  faculties  which  literature  most 
cultivates  by  exercise,  and  the  enlightenment  which  litera- 
ture brings  is  in  the  main  achieved  through  them. 

It  is  plain  that  the  appreciation  of  literature  is  a 
continuing  process,  and  depends  on  increase  of  experience 
in  the  personal  life  and  on  growth  of  the  imaginative 
f  and  sympathetic  powers;  hence  it  is  changeable  in  taste 
(*  and  standard,  and  varies  from  one  stage  of  life  to  an- 
other. It  is  a  measure  of  growth  because  it  proceeds 
from  growth;  to  love  the  poets  is  a  certificate  of  manhood, 
a  proof  that  one  has  put  forth  the  powers  and  appro- 
priated the  means  of  life,  that  one  is  on  the  way  at  least 
to  be  humanized. 

<  Literature  is  the  foremost  of  the  humanities,  of  those 
instrumentalities  by  which  man  becomes  more  completely 
human;  and  in  the  individual  this  end  is  furthered  in 
proportion  as- he  understands  human  nature  in  others 
under  its  various  modes' and  brings  forth  from  it  in  him- 
self the  richest  experience  of  its  capacities.^.  Openness 
to  experience,  or  sensibility,  is  the  prime  quality  of  the 
good  reader;  and  to  this  the  writer  adds,  on  the  active 
^  or  creative  side,  the  power  of  expression  through  lan- 
guage. These  two  faculties  are  the  essential  constituents 
of  literary  genius. 

/  The  appropriation  of  a  work  of  genius  is,  in  a  certain 

sense,  a  repetition  of  the  act  of  creation  under  different 
circumstances,  and  the  good  reader  must  share  in  the 
genius  of  his  author  in  however  pale  a  form  and  on 
however  low  a  scale.    It  has  long  been  recognized  that 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES 


this  likeness  exists  between  the  two;  for  the  act  of 
reading  is  a  blending  of  two  souls,  nor  is  it  seldom  that 
the  reader  brings  the  best  part,  vivifying  his  author  with 
his  own  memory  and  aspiration  and  imparting  a  flame 
to  the  words  from  his  own  soul. 

The  appreciation  of  literature  is  thus  by  no  means  a 
simple  matter;  it  is  not  the  ability  to  read,  nor  even  a 
canon  of  criticism  and  rules  of  admiration  and  censure 
that  are  required;  but  a  live  soul,  full  of  curiosity  and 
interest  in  life,  sensitive  to  impressions,  acute  and  subtle 
in  reception,  prompt  to  complete  a  suggestion,  and  always 
ready  with  the  light  of  its  own  life  to  serve  as  a  lamp  unto 
its  feet.  ^Appreciation  of  literature,  too,  is  neither  rapid 
nor  final;  it  moves  with  no  swifter  step  than  life  itself, 
and  it  opens,  like  life,  always  on  larger  horizons  and 
other  labors.  4. 

Experience,  such  as  has  been  indicated,  is  usually  found 
in  literature  in  a  complex  form.  It  may  be  usefully  dis- 
criminated as  either  personal,  national  or  universal,  and 
in  authors  individually  some  one  of  these  kinds  is  gen- 
erally predominant.  Byron  is  the  type  of  the  personal 
writer,  interested  in  his  own  moods  and  fortunes,  egotistic 
in  all  his  life  forces,  creating  his  heroes  in  his  own  image 
and  repeating  in  them  his  qualities,  his  ambitions  and 
disillusions,  giving  his  confession  through  their  lips. 
Virgil  is  the  most  distinguished  example  of  the  national 
writer;  one  always  thinks  of  Rome  in  the  same  breath,  — 
"Roman  Virgil,'^  as  Tennyson  begins  iiis  noble  tribute. 
Virgil  set  forth  the  specific  and  peculiar  experience  of  the 
Roman  state,  giving  expression  to  common  traits  and 
interests,  the  tradition  and  ideals  am  manners  of  the 
empire  that  had  come  to  be  out  of  the  toil  of  the  fathers 
and  was  then  the  glory  of  the  earth. 


6  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

Universal  experience  is  that  which  is  the  same  for 
all  men,  whatever  their  race,  country  or  age,  and  is 
exemplified  most  plainly  by  the  stories  of  Scripture 
which  have  had  greatest  currency,  and  in  a  single  author 
most  purely  by  Shakespeare.  The  scale  of_£xpej-iem:£ 
with  which  literature  deals,  in  other  words,  begins  with 
the  narrow  circle^f  the  writePs  own  life  and^Seidens-Gut 
through-to-rityTpeople^nation,  his  age,  until  it  includes 
humanity  as  such;  and  in  the  final  and  simplest  form 
this  experience  is  of  interest,  not  because  it  was  one 
man's  or  one  nation's,  but  because  it  may  be  the  experi-- 
ence  of  any  man  put  in  such  circumstances. 

Every  man  has  this  threefold  ply  in  his  life;  he  has 
that  huinan  nature  which  is  common  to  the  race  with 
its  unchanging  passions,  needs  and  vicissitude  of  human 
events,  and  he  adds  to  this  the  special  traits  of  his  age 
and  country,  which  he  also  has  in  common  with  his 
fellows;  and  besides  he  possesses  peculiarities  of„ char- 
acter and  temperament  and  fortune  in  life  in  which  his 
individuality  lies. 

Literature  corresponds  to  this  arrangement  by  pre- 
senting its  work  similarly  woven  of  individual,  national 
and  universal  strands,  and  it  has  more  breadth  of  signifi- 
cance in  proportion  as  it  embodies  experience  most 
purely  in  the  Shakesperian  or  Scriptural  type.  The 
appreciation  of  literature  in  this  type  is  most  ready,  in 
the  greatest  number  of  cases,  because  a  certain  prepa- 
ration in  history  or  biography  is  necessary  to  the  com- 
-^rehension  of  the  national  and  personal  types.  The 
direct  appeal  to  experience,  in  other  words,  without  the 
j  intervention  of  study,  is  made  on  the  ground  of  universal 
j  Uf^;  and  to  this  kind,  by  virtue  of  the  universal  element 
\in  it,  the  most  enduring  literature  belongs. 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  7 

To  approach  the  matter  in  another  way,  life  is  infinite 
in  the  number  of  its  phenomena,  which  taken  together 
make  up  experience;  but  there  is  great  sameness  in  the 
phenomena.  The  monotony  of  human  Hfe  is  one  of  the 
final  and  persistent  impressions  made  upon  the  reader  as 
upon  the  traveler.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  a  love 
song  that  was  merely  a  personal  effusion  of  feeling  sung 
in  Persia  centuries  ago  should  seem  to  pour  forth  the 
genuine  emotion  of  some  lover  of  to-day  in  a  far-off  land 
and  should  serve  him  as  the  verbal  channel  of  his  joy 
or  grief. 

Emotion  has  thus  prepared  for  it  in  lyric  poetry  of 
all  lands '  a  ritual  already  written  and  established. 
Actiwi,  likewise,  whose  poetic  form  is  epic  and  dramatic 
poetry,  has  a  literature  of  war  and  passion  that  passes 
current  everywhere;  and  thought,  the  third  great  form  of 
experience,  which  is  set  forth  in  philosophy  or  science, 
sums  up  its  formulas  of  knowledge  and  wisdom  which 
serve  equally  in  all  languages.  The  common  element  is 
so  great,  the  limits  of  human  experience  in  all  its  forms 
are  so  restricted,  that  there  results  this  easy  communica- 
tion and  interchange  between  races  and  ages. 

Literature,  so  built  up  and  disseminated,  while  it  always 
offers'  a  wealth  of  expression  for  the  normal  and  mediocre 
experience  of  life,  the  commonplace,  nevertheless  tends  to\ 
prefer,  in  its  high  examples,  that  which  is  surpassing  inj 
emotion,  action  and  thought,  and  to  conserve  this,  how-S 
ever  far  beyond  reality,  as  the  mode  of  overflow  of  thef 
human  soul  in  its  aspiration  and  its  dream  of  what  is/ 
possible  to  itsel^^    Man  is  a  dreamer  even  more  than  he 
is  an  actor;  his  actions  indeed  are  hardly  more  than 
fragments  and  relics  of  his  dreams.    This  is  the  realm 
of  the  ideal,  and  literature  treasures  there  its  greatest 


)  /v  a  V  e^: 


8  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

works,  those  which  are  especially  regarded  as  its  works 
ofJii^_genius  in  creative  imagination. 

The  material  is  still  experience,  and  the  expression 
sought  is  still  the  expression  of  life,  but  it  is  experience 
transformed  by  being  newly  arranged  and  it  is  life  ex- 
pregS^e?f TaTliei^Tn  Its  Tu^  in  its  opera- 

tion of  reality.  This  change  which  passes  upon  experience 
aiid"0ves  scope  to  the  soul's  power  is  broughLaboul  byihe 
intervention  of  art;  for  literature  is  not  a  record  of  experi- 
ence primarily  and  simply,  but  it  is  an  art  using  experience 
>v'      |»  for  ulterior  ends. 

(^  Experience,  things  as  they  occur,  the  mere  material  of 
expression,  is  raw  material,  a  crude  agglomeration,  life 
just  as  it  comes  to  pass.  If  a  newspaper  were  the  com- 
plete history  of  a  day,  as  a  journalist  once  defined  it, 
this  would  be  an  example  of  the  expression  in  language 
of  such  experience;  but  it  would  uot-he  literature,  be- 
cause there  would  have  been  no  intervention  of  art  in 
the  case. 

The  primarv  sten  in  art  is  selection  from  the  crude 
mass  of  material  of  such  parts  as  will  serve  the 
purpose  of  the  writer;  these  parts  are  then  combined  so 
as  to  make  a  whole,  that  is,  they  are  put  in  necessary 
relations  one  with  another  such  that  if  any  part  were  to 
;  /be  taken  awav  the  whole  w^^^^lH  fall  \r>  piprpg  thrnngh 
'^ffr~     lack  of  support;  aj^lwle._so__constnicte.d-i^^ 

"organic  unitv^  the  unity  of  an  organism.  This  unity  is 
the  end  of  art,  and  the  steps  to  it  are  selection  and  logical 
combination.  This  is  true  of  the  arts  in  general,  and 
gave  rise  to  Michael  Angelo's  well-known  definition,  — 

^  ''art  is  the  purgation  of  superfluities."  In  literature  such 
construction  is  illustrated  by  the  general  nature  of  plot, 
which  is  a  connection  of  events  in  the  relation  of  cause 


V( 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  9 

and  effect  such  that  each  is  necessary  to  the  course  and 
issue  of  the  action  as  a  whole,  and  none  superfluous. 

Hardly  inferior  to  the  use  of  plot  in  the  field  of  action  ot^^if . 
as  an  artistic  resource  in  literature  is  the  employment  of 
^type  in  the  field  of  character;  here  a  similar  process  of 
selection  takes  place  in  consequence  of  which  the  person, 
or  type,  possesses  all  the  qualities  common  to  a  class  of^ 
individua_ls  and  no  quality  peculiar  to  any  one  individual;^) 
dSTs  is  ideal  characte?^  Thus  Romeo  is  all  a  lover,  Achilles 


all  a  hero,  lago  all  a  villain.  Ideal  character,  or  type, 
and  ideal  action,  or  plot,  are  the  two  great  mod^SLoL 
creative  art  m  imaginative  literature;  but  there  are  be- 
sides  many  other  artistic  means  employed  by  literature 
in  its  representation  of  life.  These  two  serve  sufficiently 
to  illustrate  the  use  of  art  made  by  literature,  which  is  to 
clarify  the  experience  which  is  its  material;  thus  plot 
rationalizes  events  under  the  law  of  cause  and  effect,  and 
type  simplifies  character  by  presentmg  it  under  a  single 
and  immutable  aspect,  or  by  restricting  attention  to  a 
few  phases  of  it  within  a  narrow  range. 

Without  entering  on  the  mazes  of  esthetic  theory,  where 
there  is  little  certainty,  it  is  enough  to  observe  that^art 
in  general  seeks  order  in  lif e  ajjid^QbJaiiiaiiLljy  a^^^ 
of  segregation  and  recombination^  whether  the  order  so 
found  be  something  plucked  from  the  chaos  of  nature 
and  revealed  as  an  inner  harmony  of  the  universe,  or  be 
merely  the  grace  flowing  from  man  upon  the  world  and 
the  illusion  of  his  limiting  intelligence. 

The  presence  of  this  order  in  art  is  plain;  and  also 
the  principle  of  clarification,  of  simplification,  of  economy 
in  the  interest  of  an  intelligible  and  comprehensive  con- 
ception of  experience,  operating  to  disclose  this  order,  is 
likewise  to  be  observed.    Whatever  may  be  the  validity 


10  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

of  art,  in  the  philosophic  sense,  what  is  essential  here  is 
the  simple  fact  of  its  presence  as  tlie  mode  by  which 
literature  deals  with  experience  in  order  to  draw  from 
life  its  use  and  meaning  for  men. 

>^  The  conclusion  is  that  literature  represents  life  in 
certain  formal  ways;  a  degree  of  formalism  is  indeed 
inseparable  from  h'tprainrp,  as  from  all  the  other  arts,  and 
some  acquaintance  with  its  traditionary  forms  is  indis- 
pensable to  the  appreciation  of  its  contents,  while,  be- 
sides, the  pleasure  of  the  forms  themselves  is  a  part  of  its 
real  value.  The  importance  of  the  formal^  side  of  liter- 
ature is  not  lessened  by  the  fact  that  the  perception  of 
form  and  delight  in  it  are  not  English  traits  in  a  high 
degree;  in  this  respect  the  southern  nations  excel  the 
northern  peoples  by  far;  it  is  probable,  indeed,  that  for 
the  English  generally,  in  approaching  their  literature, 
there  is  a  sense  of  artificiality  in  the  mere  form  of  verse 
greater  than  they  feel  in  the  case  of  a  picture  or  a  statue. 
The  external  form,  which  is  generally  described  as  tech- 
nique, is  really  no  more  artificial  than  the  internal  form, 
which  consists  in  the  development  of  the  theme  independ- 
ently of  its  melodic  investiture;  neither  is  truly  artificial, 
but  both  belong  under  artistic  formalism,  which  is  the 

'    method  whereby  great  imaginative  literature  takes  body 

I    ^d  acquires  its  intense  and  enduring  life. 

/      In  correspondence  with  the  three  kinds  of  experience, 

personal,  national  and  universal,  ^ach  recreated  in  ardstic 

form,  there  are  three  modes  of  critical  approach  tolitera- 

ture  in  order  to  interpret  and  understand  its  contents. 

The  first  and  simplest  is  the  purely  esthetic,  and  is  espe- 

/  cially  applicable  to  universal  literature;  it  looks  only  at 
the  work,  which  is  freed  from  conditions  of  time  and  place 
and  origin,  analyzes  its  qualities,  compares  it  with  others, 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  ii 

classifies,  and  so  judges  it  under  formal  criteria  by  itself 
alone  and  for  its  own  sake  as  an  incarnation  of  that 
human  life,  an  expression  of  that  human  spirit,  which  is 
the  same  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever,  at  least  within 
the  range  of  the  arc  which  art  has  thus  far  measured  ;_it 
is  this  sameness  in  the  soul^  as  interpreted  by  art,  which_ 
jxistifies  the  absolute  nature__QL_this_nipde  of  criticism.,  ^      i 

The  second  is  the  purely  historicaLrnode-of  approach,  ^-'"'*^ 
and  is  appropriate  to  the  national  element  in  experience 
and  the  works  which  most  embody  it  in  whatever  form, 
it  looks  at  the  environment,  examines  race,  country  and 
epoch,  and  seeks  to  understand  the  work  as  merely  the 
result  of  general  social  forces  and  broad  conditions  and 
as  the  necessary  and,  as  it  were,  fatal  expression  of  these, 
and  allows  the  least  possible  part  to  individual  choice  or 
influence. 

The  third  mode,  which  is  more  proper  to  the  personal  fr^o^ 
element,  is  the  psychological ;  it  looks  at  the  personality 
of  the  writer  and  seeks  to  interpret  his  work  as  the 
result  and  expression  of  his  peculiar  temperament  and 
faculty  under  the  personal  conditions  of  his  birth,  edu- 
cation and  opportunities. 

All  three  are  useful  methods  and  are  alike  indispens- 
able; and  as  literature  normally  presents  ^^^  thre^  UinHg 
of  experience  blended^and  seldom  singly  in  a  pure  form, 
it  is  generally  necessary  to  employ  the  three  kinds  of 
criticism,  without  giving  undue  advantage  to  any  one 
of  them,  in  order  to  grasp  any  great  work  fully  in  its 
personality,  its  historical  significance  and  its  universal 
and  imperishable  esthetic  value.  It  is  nevertheless  true 
that  mere  biography  and  mere  history  are  not,  properly 
speaking,  literary  elements,  when  literature  is  regarded,, 
as  a  fine  art;  they  are  adjuncts  to  the  interpretation  of 


12  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

■    the  work  just  as  grammar  may  be,  or  archeology,  or  any 
\  other  subsidiary  aid;  but  the  characteristic  value  of  any 

pendent  of  thesfe  and  is_a  more  vit;i.1  and  pnHnring  tJijjg 
This  value  lies  in  its  beings  a  work_.of_arL 
^      The  critical  approach  to  literature  by  whatever  mode 
implies  study,  an  acquired  knowledge  of  biography  or  his- 
tory or  of  artistic  forms.    The  direct  aim  of  all  art,  how- 

%  ever,  ^s  to  please,  and  to  please  ImmedTateTyf  study  may 
be  a  part  of  the  necessary  preparation  for  appreciation, 
but^  it  does  not  enter  into  the  appreciation  itself.  It  is 
useful  to  recognize  at  once  the  fact  that  HteraturfLJisJiiQi^ 

)k  an  object  of  study ^  but  a  mode  oLpleasm;^;  it  is  not  a 
/       thmg  to  be  known  merely  like  science,  but  to  be  lived. 
'^  ^   If  a  book  does  not  yield  immediate  pleasure  to  the  reader, 
as  direct  and  intimate  as  sensation  or  emotion,  it  fails 
with  that  particular  person  to  discharge  the  proper  func- 
tion of  literature.    The  typical  example  of  tlie  operation 

-  of  literature  is  found  in  the  company  of  warriors  listening 
to  the  old  minstrel  who  relates  the  heroic  deeds,  and  tragic 
histories  that  make  up  the  tradition  of  the  tribe,  or  in 
the  groups  in  the  medieval  market-place  who  hung  on 
the  lips  of  the  traveler  telling  tales,  the  poet  chanting  lays, 
or  the  players  representing  in  rude  scenes  the  comedy  of 
human  life. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  the  hearer  is  without  some 
preparation,  but  not  that  of  study.  Even  the  simplest 
books,  such  as  those  about  nature,  require  that  there 
should  have  been  in  the  reader  some  previous  life, 
some  training  of  the 'eye,  some  curiosity  about  birds  and 
beasts  and  the  treasure-trove  of  the  seabeach.  The 
•^;^.  haying  lived  is  the  essential  condition  of  any  appreciationj^ 
or,  in  other  words,  the  appeal  to  experience,  liS  back  of 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  13 

all  Hterary  pleasure.  The  more  direct  this  is,  the  better; 
and  literature  rises  in  the  scale  of  value  in  proportion  as 
the  appeal  is  made  to  broader  and  wider  experience,  to 
more  and  more  of  life  already  realized  in  the  reader  him- 
self. His  life  with  nature  must  be  wide  and  deep  before 
he  can  appreciate  normally  and  easily  the  greater  works 
of  poetic  imagination  in  which  nature  is  employed  as  the 
channel  of  high  passion,  as  the  symbol  of  philosophic 
truth,  or  even  as  the  harmonious  and  enhancing  environ- 
ment of  scenes  of  love  or  tragedy.  That  reader  does  best 
who  in  his  use  of  literature  insists  on  the  presence  of  this 
immediate  appeal  to  himself  in  the  books  he  reads.  If 
the  book  does  not  have  this  effect  with  him,  if  it  does 
not  cooperate  with  his  own  taste  and  interest,  it  may  be 
the  best  of  books  for  others,  but  it  is  not  for  him, — 
at  least  it  is  not  yet  for  him. 

Stu^,  the  conscious  preparation  to  understand,  begins 
when  the  difficulty  of  appreciation  becomes  insurmount- 
able by  private  and  personal  experience.  The  obstacle 
is,  in  the  main,  merely  a  defect  in  experience  such  as  to 
impair  his  powers  of  imagination  and  sympathy  which 
interpret  other  lives  and  experience  not  his  own  to  himself. 
This  obstacle  rises  especially  in  past  literature  and  it 
increases  in  proportion  to  the  antiquity  or  foreignness  of 
the  literature,  in  general,  in  the  degree  to  which  the 
literature  involves  different  conditions  of  life  from  those 
which  are  contemporary.  It  is  here  that  scholarship,  of 
all  sorts  has  its  function  in  the  endeavorjp  ry]aV^p  con- 
temporary in  thoughtJheL  past  pBases  otJ5e. 

The  soul  is  essentially  the  same  in  all  men;  yet  its 
temperament,  its  consciousness  of  the  world  and  of  itself, 
its  faith  and  the  modes  of  its  gmbition  and  consolation 
are  widely  different  in  the  various  r^ces  and  civilizations. 


14  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

It  is  extremely  difficult  even  for  a  trained  and  instructed 
imagination  to  realize  the  world  of  a  medieval  saint  or  of 
a  Greek  sophist  or  of  a  Jewish  enthusiast  of  the  age  of 
the  prophets.  If  one  attempts  to  reconstruct  the  physical 
aspect  of  such  a  man's  thought  of  the  heavens  and  the 
earth,  and  then  adds,  as  best  he  can,  the  intellectual  and 
moral  contents  of  such  a  mind  and  heart,  he  seems  moving 
in  a  world  of  mistake  and  ignorance  so  different  from  our 
own  as  to  seem  a  mad  world. 

It  is  curious  how  often  the  past  world  of  our  own 
blood,  its  scheme  of  knowledge  and  scope  of  meditation 
and  passion,  take  on  this  form  of,  apparent  madness  in 
the  eyes  of  a  modern  reader  who  stops  to  think.  Still 
more,  if  one  attempts  to  reconstruct  the  world  of  the 
Arab,  the  Hindoo,  the  Chinese,  the  task  grows  hopeless; 
looking  into  the  faces  of  the  orientals,  eye  to  eye,  is  a 
blanker  thing  than  gazing  at  the  Sphinx;  the  mystery 
of  personality  seems  unfathomable  in  men  by  whom 
fundamental  ideas  are  so  differently  held  and  conceived 
as  often  to  be  unintelligible  to  us  and  hardly  recognizable; 
and  we  conclude  briefly,  —  "the  oriental  is  inscrutable." 
The  attempt  to  fathom  a  foreign  literature  is  like  that 
of  acquiring  the  language;  at  first  it  seems  easy,  but 
with  progress  it  becomes  hard;  and  it  is  the  same,  but  in 
an  infinitely  greater  degree,  with  the  task  of  acquiring 
an  Italian  or  an  Arab  or  a  Hindoo  soul. 

The  defect  of  experience  in  our  case  allows  the  imagina- 
tion to  work  only  imperfectly  in  constructing,  and  the 
sympathies  to  flow  inadequately  in  interpreting,  the 
scenes,  pa^^c^inTic;  and  mnnds  -oLother  lands  and  peoples ; 
anj^  literature  loses  its  power  m  proportion^  as^i^ 
essary  appeal  to  ourselves  diminishes.  We  read  Greek 
books^burnot  as'the  Greekslread  them;  and  one  of  the 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  15 

strange  qualities  of  immortal  books  is  that  they  permit 
themselves  to  be  so  read  and  yet  to  give  forth  an  intel- 
Hgible  and  supreme  meaning.  The  reader  takes  so  much 
of  the  book  as  has  affinity  with  him,  and  it  is  as  if  the 
book  were  re-written  in  his  mind;  indeed,  it  often  happens 
that  the  book  which  was  written  is  not  the  book  which  is 
read,  so  great  is  the  reader's  share  in  that  blending  of  two 
souls  which  is  the  act  of  reading;  it  was  certainly  thus^ 
for  example,  that  Emerson  read  Hafiz.  The  reader's  mind 
enters  into  every  book,  but  especially  into  works  of  . 
imagination;  there  is  something  private  in  his  understand- 
ing of  his  author,  and  this  is  a  greater  element  in  pro- 
portion to  the  vitality  and  richness  of  his  mind;  what  he 
makes  of  an  ancient  or  a  foreign  book  is  often,  it  must 
be  suspected,  something  that  departs  widely  from  the 
original  author's  design.  The^  function  of  scholarship, 
^^  appreciation,  is  so  to  inform  the  reader  ^yjth  ^^gp^^^- 
[tojthejnaterial  and  environment  of  the  b5>f)k  that  h^  ^^y 
/have  thelruest  possiBTe  operation  of  imaginpfjnp  and  the 
y  freest  possible  play  of  sympathy  in  apprnprigfing  thf>^ 
book;  but,  in  comparison  with  contemporary  and  native 
appreciation,  it  is  usually  a  limited  success  which  is  thus  ^ 
gained.  """^ 

As  the  study  of  biography,  history,  archaeology  and 
other  lights  on  past  conditions  or  alien  civilizations  are 
aids  to  the  reader  in  understanding  and  appropriating 
unfamiliar  experience,  so  some  study  of  artistic  forms  of 
expression  assists  him  in  appreciating  literature,  particu- 
larly in  its  higher  and  more  refined  phases.  In  poetry, 
especially,  a  modest  acquaintance  with  the  melodic  modes  ^ 
of  languages  is  indispensable;  but  it  need  not  exceed  the 
limits  which  would  similarly  be  set  for  an  elementary 
appreciation  of  music.    It  is  not  a  knowledge  of  prosody, 


1 6  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

of  the  different  varieties  of  meter  and  their  combinations, 
of  the  technique  of  verse  as  taught  in  books  that  is  nec- 
essary; such  study  is,  for  the  most  part,  wearisome  and 
fruitless. 

The  essential  thing  is  to  be  able  to  read  verse,  and 
to  read  it  intelligently  so  that  it  declares  itself  to  be 
verse  and  not  prose  by  the  mere  fall  of  the  syllables.  It 
is  extraordinary  how  rare  this  power  has  become.  It  is 
true  that  in  older  modes  of  education,  such  as  the  Greek, 
the  melodic  modes  of  the  language  were  defined  and  held 
by  the  concurrence  of  the  instrument  and  the  dance  with 
the  choral  movement  of  the  words;  but  verse,  even  when 
not  so  sustained,  has  a  clear  movement  of  its  own.  The 
ear  should  be  trained  by  the  oral  repetition  of  verse,  if 
it  is  to  be  true;  but  this  is  seldom  done  in  any  effective 
way.  It  is  not  only  the  keen  sense  of  the  melody  of  verse 
which  has  been  lost;  the  significance  of  the  line  and  the 
phrase  as  units  of  composition  is  also  seldom  known.  It 
is  not  possible  to  appreciate  verse  unless  it  is  correctly 
read,  nor  to  realize  its  beauty  without  some  sense  of  its 
structure,  that  is,  of  the  unitary  value  of  phrase,  line,  and 
stanza,  and  of  the  mode  of  their  combination  to  build  up 
the  whole  into  one  poem.  To  perceive  melodic  time  in 
verse  with  its  subtle  modulation  of  cadence  and  rhythm, 
and  to  be  aware  of  the  interlacing  and  close  junction  of 
phrase  and  line  in  which  much  of  the  grace  and  felicity 
of  poetry  resides,  are  labors  neither  difficult  nor  long;  a 
littleintelligent  attention  suffices  to  acquire_this  .power 
andwitli  it  the  formal  pleasure  of  literature  begins.  The 
way  once  entered  on  may  lead  so  far  as  to  the  apprecia- 
tion of  a  Greek  ode  or  even  to  pleasure  in  the  intricacies 
of  a  Persian  song. 

It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to  go  to  such  lengths. 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  17 

The  forms  of  poetry  have  their  effect,  like  the  forms 
of  other  arts,  without  elaborate  study  or  developed 
knowledge  of  technique.  _Qratory  is  a  mode  of  address 
full  of  artifice,  but  it  is  artifice  grounded  upon  nature, 
so  that  it  sways  the  ^'fierce  democratie"  by  itself,  and 
the  forms  of  poetry  are  similarly  grounded  upon  na- 
ture, and  its  music  plays  upon  the  heart  and  mind  of  men 
by  a  necessity  of  their  constitution.  A  scientific  and 
technical  knowledge  is  by  no  means  required  of  the 
reader;  but  an  elementary  acquaintance  with  melody  and 
structure,  such  as  to  allow  correct  reading  and  the  per- 
ception of  the  harmonious  confinement  of  thought  within 
the  limits  of  the  musical  beats  of  phrase  and  line,  is 
hardly  to  be  dispensed  with. 

It  is  questionable,  on  the  other  hand,  whether  much 
is  gained  by  study  of  the  artistic  field  in  larger  matters, 
such  as,  for  example,  dramatic  construction.  In  that 
direction  the  reader  turns  his  attention  from  the  work 
to  the  workmanship,  and  may  embarrass  himself  with 
theory,  or  preconceptions  not  universally  appHcable. 
But  without  setting  limits  to  study  of  whatever  sort,  for 
all  modes  of  study  have  possible  uses,  it  is  to  be  laid  down 
in  general  that  all  study  of  literature  in  the  way  of  prepa- 
ration to  grasp  and  understand,  whether  it  be  linguistic, 
historical  or  esthetic,  evists  to  be  forgotten  and  laid  off 
as  soon  as  it  is  completed;  its  end  is  to  withdraw  one  by 
one  the  veils,  and  leave  the  reader  alone  with  the  spirit 
of  the  book,  which  then  speaks  to  him  face  to  face.  All 
the  rest  was  but  preliminary;  it  is  only  then  that  he 
begins  to  read. 

The  uses  of  study  in  all  its  kinds  being  thus  subsidiary 
and  a  means  of  remedying  defects  in  the  power  of  imagi- 
nation, sympathy  and  perception  of  form,  the  reader  is 


/ 


i8  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

at  last  thrown  fairly  back  upon  his  own  experience,  or 
the  kind  and  quality  oFthe  liffTieTiasT^ived7~forhis  ap- 
preciation of  literature;  he  is  left  to  himself.  If  the  light 
is  not  in  him,  he  cannot  see;  and,  in  general,  large  parts 
of  literature  remain  dark  and,  even  in  authors  whom  he 
comprehends  in  the  main  portions,  continue  obscure.  This 
is  especially  true  of  the  greatest  works  of  genius.  For 
the  reader  the  measure  of  his  understanding  of  the 
author  is  the  measure  of  the  author;  and  from  this  there 
is  no  appeal.  It  results  from  these  conditions  that  litera- 
ture is  slowly  appropriated  and  is  a  thing  of  growth.  The 
reader  cannot  transcend  at  the  moment  his  own  season; 
as  a  child  he  reads  as  a  child,  and  as  a  man  as  a  man.  A 
boy  of  ten  may  read  Homer,  but  he  reads  him  with  the 
power  of  a  boy  of  ten.  It  is  a  child's  Homer.  The  de- 
pendence of  the  book  on  the  reader  being  so  strict,  it  is 
always  advisable  to  keep  literary  study  on  a  near  level 
with  lifr  fii  it  in  in  the  individnnl  rn^ip 

The  natural  introduction  to  literature  for  the  very 
young  is  by  means  of  that  universal  sort  which  is  selected 
from  all  ages  and  requires  no  study,  such  as  the  stories 
of  Scripture,  short  legendary  tales  of  history,  beast  and 
bird  fables,  fairy  tales  and  the  like.  They  have,  besides 
their  intelligibility,  the  advantage  of  accustoming  the 
mind  to  a  make-believe  world,  natural  to  childish  fancy, 
and  so  laying  the  foundation  for  that  principle  of  con- 
vention which  is  fundamental  in  art  and  indispensable  in 
its  practise,  and  also  of  making  the  contemplation  of 
imaginary  experience  habitual  so  that  there  is  no  shock 
between  it  and  truth.  The  transposition  by  which  human 
experience  is  placed  in  the  bird  and  beast  world  is  a 
literary  fiction;  as  an  element  in  early  education  it  helps 
to  give  that  plasticity  to  the  world  of  fact  which  is 


FIRST   PRINCIPLES  19 

essential  to  the  artistic  interpretation  of  life  and  the 
imaginary  habit  of  mind.  The  serious  study  of  one's 
own  literature  is  most  fruitfully  begun  by  acquaintance 
with  those  authors  who  are  in  vogue  and  nearly  con- 
temporary, the  literature  of  the  century  preceding,  on 
the  well-worn  principle  of  proceeding  in  knowledge  from 
the  better-known  to  less  well-known,  and  because  there 
is  the  minimum  of  necessary  study  intervening  between 
author  and  reader. 

To  approach  and  have  practise  in  the  literature  that 
requires  study  there  is  nothing  better  for  the  beginner 
than  Greek  literature,  and  it  has  the  peculiar  advantage 
for  broadening  the  mind  of  being  a  pagan  literature  and 
yet  closely  kindred  to  our  own,  presenting  human  expe- 
rience under  very  different  conditions  from  the  present, 
and  yet  easily  realizable  in  wise  and  beautiful  forms.  In  j^ 
Greek  literature,  too,  the  universal  element  is  greater  than 
in  any  other,  and  this  facilitates  its  comprehension  while 
the  mind  becomes  accustomed  to  the  mixture  with  the 
universal  of  the  past,  thft  temporal,  the  racial,  the  obscure, 
the  dead. 

It  is  advisable,  also,  in  these  early  choices  and  initial 
steps  to  consider  the  season  of  the  reader,  to  begin 
with  books  in  which  j^rtinn  has  a  l^rgP  Qharp  anH  pn^t^ 
pone  those  in  which  thought  is  dominant^  to  favor  those 
of  simple  rather  tlian  oFrefined  emotion,  to  keep  in  all 
things  near  to  the  time  of  fife  and  to  that  experience. 
especially  which  is  nascent  if  not  already  arrived  in  the 
reader.  And  what  is  true  of  the  beginner  is  true  for  every 
later  period.  It  is  best  to  be^f>n^'=^t  with  nnf^plf^yanH 
to  respect  one's  own  tastes  and  predilections;  not  to  read 
books  because  they  are  classics,  if  they  yield  no  true 
pleasure,  not  to  force  a  tame  liking,  not  to  feign  to  oneself, 


20  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

or  in  other  ways  to  confuse  what  it  is  said  one  ought  to 
like  with  what  one  does  like  sincerely. 
;^  It  is  always  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  appreciation  is  a 
thing  of  growth .^A  great  book  does  not  give  itself  all 
at  once,  nor  perhaps  quickly,  but  the  maxim  holds  good, 
j^  —  slow  love  is  long  love.     Books  naturally  fall  into  three 

t*V*'^^  classes:  those  that  ar^) outlived,  jbecause  the  experience 
they  contain  and  address  is  shallow  or  transitory;  those 

c        Mhat  are  arrived  at  late  because  the  experience  involved 
,<,  is  mature;  and  thosejilthe  greatest,  which  give  something 

^^    tj^to  the  youngest  and  have  something  left  to  give  to  the 

^^  oldest,  which  keep  pace  with  life  itself  and  like  life  dis- 
close themselves  more  profoundly,  intimately  and  in 
expanding  values  with  familiarity. 

The  secret  of  appreciajdon_is  to  slmre  the  passlon^for.- 
lifejiat  literature  itself  exemplifies  and  contains;  out 
of  real  experience,  the  best  that  one  can  have,  to  possess 
oneself  of  that  imaginary  experience  which  is  the  stuff  of 
larger  life  and  the  place  of  the  ideal  expansion  of  the  soul, 
the  gateway  to  which  is  art  in  all  forms  and  primarily 
literature;  to  avail  oneself  of  that  for  pleasure  and  wis- 
dom and  fullness  of  life.  It  is  those  minds  which  are  thus 
experienced  that  alone  come  to  be  on  the  level  of  the 
greatest  works  and  to  absorb  their  life;  but  the  way  is  by 
a  gradual  ascent,  by  natural  growth,  by  maintaining  a 
vital  relation  with  what  is  read.  So  long  as  the  bond 
between  author  and  reader  is  a  living  bond,  appreciation 
is  secure. 


CHAPTER  II 

LYRICAL  POETRY 

The  lyric  is  primarily  the  expression  of  emotion.  In  the 
beginning  emotion  was  expressed  by  inarticulate  cries,  of 
which  the  developed  artistic  form  in  civilization  is  pure 
music.  It  was  originally  accompanied  by  the  dance,  and 
the  literary  element  appears  to  have  entered  first  as  a 
short  chanted  phrase  in  monotonous  repetition.  In  the 
evolution  of  civilization  these  several  elements  have  given 
rise  to  different  arts,  and  the  lyric  now  stands  by  itself 
as  the  expression  of  emotion  by  words,  apart  from  the 
dance  or  music  in  the  strict  sense.  It  remains  true,  how- 
ever, that  the  substance  of  the  lyric,  the  essential  ex- 
perience which  it  contains,  is  the  emotion,  and  not  the 
image  set  forth  in  words  which  indeed  exists  only  to 
suggest  or  discharge  the  emotion.  This  is  a  fundamental 
consideration.  The  emotion  is  seen  throbbing  as  it  were 
in  the  image,  as  you  may  see  a  bird's  throat  throb  with 
its  song;  what  you  see  is  the  outward  color  and  move- 
ment; what  you  hear  is  the  song,  that  emotion  which  in 
itself  is  imageless,  a  thing  felt,  not  beheld.  The  sub- 
stance of  meaning  in  the  poem  is  the  emotion  roused  by 
the  suggestion  of  the  image;  and  however  personal  the 
lyric  may  be,  it  is  universalized  and  made  good  for  all 
men  by  the  emotion  which  is  the  same  in  human  nature. 
Lyrics,  strictly  speaking,  are  symbols  of  universal  emo- 
tion which  is  conveyed  or  roused  by  the  imagery. 

21 


/4 


22  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

Emotion  is  constant  in  life.  It  is  a  thing  of  unrest; 
it  rises,  grows,  and  passes  away;  but  it  comes  again  and 
again.  Life  is  full  of  these  vague  waves;  and  perhaps 
one  reason  why  lyric  poetry  holds  so  leading  a  place  in 
literature,  and  is  the  quickest  and  surest  appeal  of  the 
poets,  is  because  it  furnishes  definite  form,  in  these  sym- 
bols of  universal  emotion,  for  the  concentration  and  ex- 
pression, under  the  intellectual  form  of  an  image,  of  that 
vague  feeling  that  finds  its  emotional  form  most  surely 
in  music.  The  lyric  defines  and  releases  this  vague  emo- 
tion which  is  forever  arising  in  experience;  this  is  its 
function,  its  ground  of  being  in  art,  its  use  to  the  world. 
It  gives  feeling  a  career  in  life,  and  finds  for  it  temporary 
assuagement  and  repose.  It  belongs  to  the  universality 
of  emotion  that  the  imagery  of  lyric  poetry  has  such 
elements  of  permanence.  It  is  sometimes  made  a  re- 
proach to  poets  that  they  use  this  ancient  and  conven- 
tional imagery;  but  the  nightingale  and  the  rose,  the 
serenade,  the  enclosed  garden,  the  Eden-isle  are  images 
and  situations  charged  with  the  associations  of  long  use; 
they  are,  in  fact,  a  ritual  of  love-service,  and  possess  a 
ceremonial  beauty  and  solemnity;  they  are  parts  of 
ancient  poetic  worship.  They  are  like  a  fixed  musical 
scale  on  which  the  emotion,  which  is  the  imageless  burden 
of  song,  rises  and  falls. 

If  the  reader  be  somewhat  mature  and  accustomed  to 
poetry,  the  best  general  view  of  the  nature  and  the  use  of 
lyric  verse,  its  range  and  power,  is  to  be  found  in  the 
"Greek  Anthology"  which  is  open  for  English  readers  most 
profitably  in  MacKail's  volume  of  selections  and  there 
accompanied  by  a  remarkable  essay,  interpreting  the 
verse  and  bringing  it  home  as  the  music  of  Greek  life  and 
of  the  universal  heart  at  one  and  the  same  time.    To  be 


LYRICAL   POETRY  23 

familiar  with  the  "Greek  Anthology"  is  to  know  well-nigh 
the  whole  compass  of  human  emotion  with  regard  to 
earthly  things  in  forms  of  expression  unrivaled  for  clarity, 
grace,  beauty,  and  for  the  wisdom  of  life.  This  book  is 
the  great  monument  of  the  lyric,  and  stands  sole  and 
apart.  But  to  appreciate  a  work  so  foreign  to  our  con- 
temporary culture  requires  a  high  degree  of  cultivation; 
on  the  principles  already  laid  down,  the  beginning  of 
appreciation  of  lyric  verse  is  rather  to  be  made  in  one's 
own  language  and  in  poets  nigh  to  our  own  times.  Pal- 
grave's  "Golden  Treasury"  is  still  the  book  preferred  as  a 
collection  of  English  lyrics;  but  even  in  that,  indis- 
pensable as  it  is  to  the  daily  lover  of  English  verse,  the 
beginner  is  forced  to  pick  and  choose  and  to  reject.  It  is 
best  to  begin  with  Scott's  lyrics  of  gallant  romance  with 
their  warmth  of  color  and  out-of-door  freshness,  or  war 
lyrics  like  Campbell's  with  their  quick  flash,  their  humble 
and  plain  pathos,  and  the  thunderous  sound  of  battle  gone 
into  the  verse;  or,  perhaps  best  of  all  with  Burns,  because 
there  are  so  many  of  his  poems,  and  the  spirit  of  the  lyric 
is  there  the  master  of  many  revels.  Burns  has  the  advan- 
tage for  beginners,  who  find  it  hard  to  free  their  minds 
from  the  suspicion  of  effeminacy  in  poetry,  of  always 
making  a  profoundly  masculine  impression.  Like  Scott 
and  Byron  he  is  distinctly  a  man's  poet,  and  he  is  more 
accessible,  more  various  and  especially  more  intimate  than 
they  are  in  the  appeal  he  makes  to  the  nascent  passion, 
thoughts  and  affections  of  life;  and  the  experience  he 
brings,  though  set  to  melody  and  rhymes,  is  untrans- 
formed  and  genuine,  and  keeps  near  to  earth,  to  things 
common  and  obvious,  and  to  the  comrade  side  of  life  both 
for  wisdom  and  abandon.  Wordsworth  is  in  important 
ways  a  companion  spirit  to  Burns,  and  Coleridge  on  cer- 


24  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

tain  sides  neighbors  Scott,  though  with  profound  dif- 
ferences. Keats  and  Shelley  each  require  a  certain 
likeness  of  temperament  in  the  reader,  while  Byron  makes 
a  less  subtle  appeal.  The  personal,  national  and  universal 
elements  in  these  poets  are  easily  discriminated,  and  their 
works  may  readily  be  related,  by  the  reader  who  is  intent 
on  study  and  a  knowledge  of  the  historic  course  of  litera- 
ture, to  the  democratic  movement  of  the  time,  to  the 
ballad  revival  and  the  Hellenic  renascence,  to  the  Revo- 
lution, and  in  general  to  all  the  literary  and  social  phe- 
nomena of  that  age  of  romanticism.  But  this  belongs  to 
the  history  of  literature  and  is  a  secondary  matter.  It 
may  be  accepted  without  hesitation  that  a  reader  who 
has  familiarized  himself  with  and  truly  appropriated  this 
group  of  poets  is  well  prepared  to  appreciate  lyric  poetry 
in  any  field. 

How  to  read  the  poets  is,  nevertheless,  an  art  to  be 
learned,  and  into  it  much  tact  enters  if  there  be  not  in 
the  reader  a  native  and  self-discovered  susceptibility  to 
literary  pleasure.  In  the  initial  steps  the  end  should  be 
to  make  this  discovery,  to  experiment  with  various 
authors  in  search  of  those  to  whose  books  the  tempera- 
ment and  experience  of  the  reader  respond  with  spon- 
taneity. There  should  consequently  be  great  latitude  of 
neglect  and  a  free  exercise  of  it,  and  the  field  of  literature 
is  so  large  and  various  that  there  is  no  reason  to  fear  any 
essential  loss.  All  books  are  not  for  all  minds;  it  is  a 
question  of  the  right  minds  finding  the  right  books  by  a 
process  of  natural  affinity.  In  early  years  there  is,  how- 
ever, a  counterbalancing  truth.  A  large  proportion  of 
patience  is  also  necessary  in  order  that  a  book  may  have 
a  fair  chance  to  win  a  hearing;  and  in  serious  study  the 
various  phases  of  interest  in  an  author  should  be  closely 


LYRICAL   POETRY  25 

regarded.  As  in  trained  observation  the  eye  is  taught  to 
see  by  having  its  attention  directed  to  many  points  of  the 
object  and  acquires  modes  and  habits  of  seeing,  the  mind 
must  be  led  to  look  in  various  directions  and  acquire 
habits  of  conduct  in  reading.  Often  the  young  reader 
does  not  know  what  to  look  for  in  a  book,  as  he  would 
not  know  what  to  look  for  in  a  stone  or  a  flower  without 
some  geological  or  botanical  hint.  It  is  at  this  stage  that 
patience  is  most  needed  and  the  habit  of  expectant  and 
discursive  interest.  This  is  the  time  of  experiment  when 
the  mind  is  finding  itself,  and  is  often  surprised  into  self- 
discovery  by  accident.  It  is  thus  that  the  chance  en- 
counter with  a  book  has  frequently  marked  the  awakening 
of  a  life.  It  is  therefore  desirable  to  open  the  phases  of 
an  author  fully,  and  to  relate  his  work  in  divers  ways  to 
the  intelligence  and  sympathy  in  search  of  some  response, 
and  in  general  to  proceed  from  the  simpler  to  the  more 
complex  and  subtle,  from  reality  and  action  to  imagina- 
tion and  passion,  and  so  on  to  thought  and  wisdom  that 
are  grounded  on  the  experience  depicted. 

Perhaps  an  example  may  be  useful,  given  with  some 
degree  of  detail.  Let  the  case  be  Burns.  A  condensed 
guide  for  reading  his  verse  would  run  somewhat  as 
follows.  It  would  be  noticed  that  he  was  familiar  with 
animals,  cared  for  them,  handled  them,  and  loved  them 
in  their  degree.  He  thinks  of  them  realistically  as  suffer- 
ing brutes  with  a  prevailing  environment  of  hardship  and 
sympathizes  with  them  as  a  part  of  farm  life.  "To  a 
Mouse"  and  "A  Winter  Night"  are  examples.  Simi- 
larly, "To  a  Mountain  Daisy"  presents  flowers  under  the 
same  aspect  of  misfortune.  In  both  cases  a  moral  is 
added,  giving  a  decided  human  interest  to  the  mere  nat- 
ural objects,  as  if  the  mind  could  not  rest  in  them,  but 


26  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

finds  only  man  finally  interesting  to  man  according  to 
the  old  Greek  maxim.  The  animal  life  mixes  with  man's 
life  actually  in  "The  Auld  Farmer  to  his  Auld  Mare," 
and  needs  no  moralizing:  in  "The  Death  and  Dying 
Words  of  Poor  Mailie,"  the  poet  takes  the  animal's  point 
of  view.  In  "The  Twa  Dogs"  while  the  dog  character  is 
realistic  the  meaning  is  wholly  human;  it  is  a  poem  of 
human  life.  The  landscape,  nature  in  its  moods,  is  seen 
characteristically  in  broad  sweeps  and  described  barely, 
with  no  elaboration,  and  is  predominantly  sad,  wintry,  or 
pathetic.  The  external  life  is  Adam's  world,  a  world 
under  a  curse  of  pain,  toil  or  fear;  it  is  the  primitive  rude 
farm  world.  Thomson's  "Winter"  has  this  same  atmos- 
phere. The  landscape,  however,  is  incidental  and  used 
as  a  background  for  human  life  or  for  sentiment,  from 
which  it  takes  emotional  beauty  —  a  beauty  reflected 
from  the  human  feeling,  joyful  or  sad  as  that  is  happy  or 
troubled;  and  often  the  landscape  thus  seems  to  give  tone 
to  the  poem  while  in  fact  it  is  only  the  halo  round  the 
poem.  The  moods  in  which  the  non-human  elements 
in  the  verse  are  present,  whether  these  are  animal  or 
inanimate,  are  pathos,  humor,  and  sentiment,  and  rarely 
awe  also  in  passages  of  pure  description.  One  should 
note  especially  the  bare  detail  of  fact,  well  selected,  and 
in  treatment  the  speed  and  vigor,  the  quick  realization 
to  the  eye  or  heart,  the  immediacy  of  the  wit,  humor, 
or  sense. 

"The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  is  Burns'  most  gen- 
erally acceptable  poem.  It  is  said  to  be  impaired  as 
poetry  by  its  Englishry,  or  literary  tradition  in  style  and 
diction  coming  from  classic  English  verse.  Burns'  re- 
ligious feeling  was  very  deep  down  under  the  surface  of 
his  days  and  weeks,  and  here  is  shown  by  his  apprecia- 


LYRICAL   POETRY  27 


tion  of  the  types  in  which  he  had  respected  piety  in  his 
parents.  Those  who  censure  the  poem  for  its  imperfect 
art  are  applying  academic  criticism,  of  which  the  mark  is 
that  it  attends  to  art  more  than  to  substance,  to  Httle 
purpose:  they  lose  that  grip  on  life  which  keeps  such 
criticism  within  bounds  of  good  sense;  the  poem,  what- 
ever its  faults,  is  an  imperishable  monument  of  that  home- 
feeling,  shown  also  in  Goldsmith's  "Deserted  Village" 
and  Whittier's  "Snowbound,''  which  is  so  profound  an 
element  in  the  character  as  well  as  the  affections  of  Eng- 
lish-speaking people  the  world  over;  the  Christian  home, 
whether  Scotch,  Irish  or  American,  is  the  same  substan- 
tially, and  shines  the  more  the  more  humble  the  home; 
the  poem  presents  this,  and  remains,  as  it  should  be,  more 
domestic  than  religious.  After  this  "The  Vision"  should 
be  read,  the  scene  being  the  same,  and  the  subject  being 
what  was  more  to  Burns  than  religion,  —  his  call  to  the 
poet's  life.  Opposed  to  these  purer  scenes  of  his  own 
home  in  its  noblest  associations  stand  the  satiric  poems 
on  the  church  and  its  congregation.  There  has  never  been 
so  exposing  and  self- justifying  satire  in  English;  as  a 
portrayal  of  manners  and  as  a  moral  argument  they  are 
equally  complete.  The  series  includes  "The  Twa  Herds," 
"The  Holy  Fair,"  "The  Ordination,"  "Holy  Willie's 
Prayer,"  "The  Kirk's  Alarm,"  "Address  to  the  Deil," 
"Address  to  the  Unco'  Guid,"  "To  the  Rev.  John 
M'Math";  and  with  these  should  be  read  the  "Epistle  to 
a  Young  Friend,"  "A  Bard's  Epitaph,"  "Epistle  to  James 
Smith,"  "Epistle  to  Davie,"  "Epistle  to  J.  Lapraik," 
"Second  Epistle  to  J.  Lapraik,"  "Epistle  to  William 
Simpson,"  which  sufficiently  illustrate  Burns'  personal 
moods,  both  as  poet  and  man.  The  character  drawing, 
the  general  social  scene,  the  argument,  the  observation  of 


28  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

life  and  reflection  upon  it  are  all  easy  to  take  in.  These 
are  all  pure  Scotch  pieces  and  come  out  of  the  core  of 
Burns'  life.  "Tarn  O'Shanter"  should  be  read  as  narra- 
tive; but  observe  its  vivid  vision,  speed  and  the  variety 
of  feelings  excited  by  it  as  one  reads.  It  is  hardly  ex- 
celled, except  that  its  subject  is  slighter,  by  "The  Jolly 
Beggars,"  which  is  the  masterpiece  of  the  pure  Scotch 
poems;  notable  in  this  poem  is  the  absence  of  any  moral 
attitude  toward  its  matter,  the  shameless  unconscious- 
ness of  it,  as  of  the  beggars  themselves,  which  must  be 
reckoned  an  artistic  triumph.  Observe  also  its  structure, 
and  the  union  in  it  of  Burns'  two  great  powers  — the 
song-power  and  the  manners-drawing  power,  which  give 
to  it  the  force  of  all  his  capacity  as  a  writer,  except  as  a 
love-poet.  The  best  of  the  pure  Scotch  poems,  not  al- 
ready mentioned,  are  "Halloween,"  "Scotch  Drink," 
"Poor  Mailie's  Elegy,"  "To  a  Louse,"  "Epistle  to  John 
Rankine,"  "Death  and  Doctor  Hornbook,"  "A  Poet's 
Welcome,"  "Adam  Armour's  Prayer,"  "Nature's  Law," 
and  the  "Epistles." 

The  best  songs  are  those  of  mingled  imagination  and 
passion  with  a  personal  touch,  such  as  "Highland  Mary," 
"Thou  lingering  star,"  "Of  a'  the  airts,  "Ae  fond  kiss," 
"Mary  Morison,"  "O  wert  thou  in  the  cauld  blast," 
"Here's  a  health";  those  of  the  same  sort  but  more  im- 
personal, such  as  "How  lang  and  drearie,"  "The  Banks 
of  Doon,"  "A  red,  red  rose,"  "Coming  through  the  rye," 
"Saw  ye  bonie  Leslie,"  "0  this  is  no  my  ain  lassie,"  "My 
Nanie,  O";  those  of  universal  appeal  (not  love-songs), 
such  as  "John  Anderson,"  "Auld  Lang  Syne,"  "Scots  wha 
hae,"  "Is  there  for  honest  poverty";  those  of  a  lighter, 
careless  cast,  such  as  "O  Whistle,"  "I'm  o'er  young," 
"Duncan  Davison,"  "Duncan  Gray,"  "Laddie,  lie  near 


LYRICAL   POETRY  29 

me,"  "Whistle  o'er  the  lave  of  it,"  "The  Rantin  Dog," 
"O  May,  thy  morn,"  "Corn  Rigs,"  "Green  grow  the 
rashes";  those  touched  (but  hardly  touched)  with  ro- 
mance, such  as  "M'Pherson's  Farewell,"  "The  Silver 
Tassie,"  "My  heart's  in  the  highlands,"  "It  was  a'  for 
our  rightfu'  king";  the  drinking  songs,  such  as  "Willie 
brew'd  a  peck  0'  maut,"  and  others  of  like  rollicking  or 
mocking  nature.  These  titles  include  nearly  all  the  best 
lyrics,  the  characteristic  and  famous  ones.  Their  qualities 
are  too  simple  to  require  further  remark.  Notice  the 
unity  of  each,  its  being  all  of  a  piece,  in  one  tone  of  feel- 
ing; the  atmosphere  of  landscape  or  of  incident  in  some; 
the  temperament  prevailing  in  each,  pathos,  humor,  ^ 
raillery,  gallantry,  sentiment,  all  of  a  popular  and  common 
kind;  the  music  sharing  the  spirit  of  each;  and  the  sim- 
ple directness  of  speech,  just  like  natural  quick  prose, 
only  conveying  images  and  feelings  as  a  rule,  or  if 
ideas,  then  ideas  that  glow  with  emotion;  and  espe- 
cially notice  the  complete  success  of  each  in  what  it 
tries  to  do. 

It  is  with  some  such  counsel  as  this,  however  obtained, 
that  the  reader  who  is  beginning  acquaintance  with  Eng- 
lish lyric  poetry  in  the  group  named  should  be  attended; 
or,  if  this  be  lacking,  it  is  by  such  attention  to  many  sides 
of  his  author  that  he  should  endeavor  to  open  his  eyes 
and  to  multiply  his  points  of  contact.  A  connection  is 
to  be  made  between  life  in  the  author  and  life  in  himself; 
the  points  of  power  in  the  one  and  the  points  of  sensi- 
tiveness in  the  other  must  mutually  find  each  other.  It 
is  only  then  that  appreciation  begins. 

One  of  the  liveliest  pleasures  of  literary  study  in  its 
inception  is  this  rapid  multiplication  of  the  interest  of 
life;  to  become  aware  of  the  variety  of  the  surface  of 


30  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

life,  to  enter  beneath  the  surfaces,  to  penetrate  them  and 
realize  their  significance.  Among  these  new  interests  some 
special  attention  should  be  given  to  the  artistic  forms  of 
the  expression,  to  its  modes  of  handling  the  theme,  even 
so  far  as  to  make  a  slight  analysis,  if  only  to  bring  them 
more  fully  into  clear  consciousness.  The  forms  of  art 
are  then  seen  to  be  not  something  arbitrary,  but  replicas 
of  life  itself.  The  play  of  emotion  in  the  poet  is  not 
something  artificial,  nor  idiosyncratic  and  peculiar  to 
himself;  in  him  as  in  others  it  follows  the  ordinary  process 
of  experience;  but  by  his  art  he  exhibits  this  play  in 
forms  of  greater  clarity,  brilliance  and  beauty.  For  the 
purposes  of  brief  illustration  it  will  be  sufficient  to  refer 
to  well-known  lyrics  and  to  confine  attention  to  those  in 
which  nature  gives  the  base  of  the  imagery  by  means  of 
which  the  emotion  is  rendered.  In  Shelley's  lines  "The 
Recollection"  there  is  a  clear-cut  example  of  the  way  in 
which  a  natural  scene  is  handled  to  develop  the  climax 
of  an  emotional  moment.  In  the  first  movement  of  the 
poem  the  landscape  fills  the  entire  field  of  interest  as 
mere  description,  and  is  so  rendered  as  to  build  up  an 
atmosphere  of  solitude,  silence  and  quiet  peace  with  in- 
creasing effect,  but  without  human  suggestion,  until  the 
scene  becomes  intense  and  magnetic,  and  the  mood 
reaches  its  height: 

"There  seemed,  from  the  remotest  seat 

Of  the  white  mountain  waste 
To  the  soft  flower  beneath  our  feet, 

A  magic  circle  traced, 
A  spirit  interfused  around, 

A  thrilling,  silent  life, — 
To  momentary  peace  it  bound 

Our  mortal  nature's  strife; 


LYRICAL   POETRY  31 

And  still  I  felt  the  center  of 

The  magic  circle  there 
Was  one  fair  form  that  filled  with  love 

The  lifeless  atmosphere." 

The  mood  arising  out  of  these  natural  surroundings  has 
so  moved  as  to  concentrate  the  whole  living  world  on  the 
figure  of  the  lady  suddenly  disclosed,  and  to  center  the 
emotion  of  the  scene  in  her  presence  so  that  she  seems 
the  source  of  all  life  that  lives  there.  The  climax  of  the 
natural  scene  in  the  feminine  form  is  complete;  the  scene, 
in  fact,  radiates  from  her.  In  Shelley's  verse  of  this  kind 
the  emotion  which  rises  out  of  nature  often  returns  to 
nature  to  find  there  its  cessation  and  repose,  and  the  cycle 
is  then  complete  and  parallels  normal  experience.  In 
the  "Stanzas  Written  in  Dejection  near  Naples"  the  ex- 
ample is  very  perfect,  and  it  should  be  observed  how 
definitely  the  successive  stages  of  the  mood,  as  it  disen- 
gages itself  from  the  scene  and  becomes  purely  personal 
and  human,  are  held  each  within  the  limits  of  the  stanza, 
and  how  the  orderly  development  of  the  mood  as  it  rises 
and  falls  away  is  accomplished  by  means  of  the  stanzaic 
structure.  The  variations  of  the  artistic  process  are  in- 
finite. In  Keats'  "Ode  to  a  Nightingale"  the  more 
common  order  is  reversed;  the  poem  begins  with  emotion 
already  present  and  seeks  union  with  nature  as  an  end 
in  itself;  the  soul,  being  already  in  a  certain  mood,  seeks 
expression  by  union  with  the  nightingale's  song,  seeks 
self-expression  there,  and  when  the  song  ceases  the  soul 
returns  to  itself  and  awakes  from  its  dream.  The  con- 
trast with  the  "Stanzas  near  Naples"  is  complete.  Where- 
as in  Shelley's  poem  nature  is  real  and  the  emotion  is  the 
emerging  dream  from  which  the  soul  awakes  returning  to 
nature,  in  Keats'  ode  the  emotion  is  real,  and  nature  the 


32  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

dream  from  which  the  soul  awakes  returning  to  itself. 
Another  interesting  example,  artistically,  is  Shelley's 
"Indian  Serenade."  Here  the  poem  has  a  prelude  in  the 
dream  world  itself  from  which  the  lover  awakes  into  a 
natural  world  that  has  all  the  characteristics  of  a  dream, 
and  thence  beginning  its  emotional  career,  drops  the  night- 
scene  and  nature  completely  out  of  sight  and  lives  only  in 
the  world  of  its  own  passionate  desire. 

Such  are  some  of  the  examples  of  the  nature  lyric  of 
the  most  poetic  type.  Less  unified,  but  not  less  interest- 
ing, are  those  forms  that  employ  the  method  of  paral- 
lelism instead  of  evolution  and  set  the  natural  scene 
beside  the  mind's  thought,  without  losing  it  from  view  in 
the  intense  oblivion  of  emotion.  Wordsworth's  "Lines 
Written  in  Early  Spring"  follows  this  method,  and  Tenny- 
son's "Break,  break,  break,"  is  perhaps  the  finest  example 
of  it,  setting  forth  the  opposition  of  life  continuing  in  all 
its  activities  in  antithesis  to  the  fact  of  death  and  per- 
sonal loss.  The  same  method  and  situation,  but  with  a 
closer  union  of  the  scene  with  the  sense  of  lost  love,  are 
in  Burns'  "Bonnie  Doon."  Still  another  variety  of  the 
type  and  one  widely  used,  is  the  method  of  expanding  the 
emotion  by  a  rising  enlargement  of  the  imagery,  seen  in 
Burns'  "My  luve's  like  a  red,  red  rose";  the  passage  from 
the  symbol  of  the  fresh-sprung  rose  and  the  simple  tune 
to  the  vast  imagery  of  the  seas,  and  the  earth's  destruc- 
tion, and  distance  to  the  world's  end,  is  simply  made,  and 
by  this  speed  with  its  splendid  abandon  the  immensity 
of  the  poet's  love  is  rendered.  A  curious  instance  of 
mingled  parallelism  between  the  natural  scene  and  the 
emotional  mood,  with  expansion  through  the  imagery,  is 
found  in  Tennyson's  "Tears,  idle  tears";  there  is  in  this 
poem  a  reverberation  of  emotion,  as  in  instrumental 


i 


LYRICAL   POETRY  33 

music,  and  this  reverberation  is  really  the  poem,  as  may 
be  known  by  the  use  of  the  refrain.  The  function  of  the 
refrain  in  verse  is  precisely  to  secure  this  reverberation 
of  one  chord  of  the  mood  continually  rising  up  and  dying, 
and  rising  again  and  dying  away,  so  that  the  emotion 
rather  than  any  particular  image  of  the  emotion  shall 
fill  the  mind;  for  such  poems,  in  which,  moreover,  the 
mere  monotony  of  repetition  deadens  and  hypnotizes  the 
intellectual  consciousness,  are  like  music,  —  though 
floating  images  may  attend  the  emotion  they  are  sub- 
ordinate to  it;  emotion,  imageless  emotion,  is  the  end 
sought. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  larger  number  of  these 
examples  the  effect  is  one  of  sadness,  and  it  must  be 
acknowledged  that  sadness  prevails  in  the  lyric  and  in 
the  lyrical  temperament.  Victorious  emotion  is  some- 
times the  subject;  but  emotion  is  more  often  fruitless,  as 
it  is  fleeting,  and  the  sadness  of  the  lyric  mood  results 
largely  from  the  habitual  experience  in  life  of  such  un- 
fulfilled or  thwarted  emotion,  tending  to  repeat  itself. 
All  art  requires  repose  as  its  end;  and  the  principle  of 
repose  is  as  necessary  in  the  lyric  as  elsewhere;  but  it  is 
found  usually  in  the  exhaustion  rather  than  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  emotion.  On  the  scale  of  longer  poetry,  this 
repose  is  obtained  by  a  prophetic  touch.  Thus  in  the 
great  case  of  English  elegy,  Milton  finds  repose  at  the 
close  of  his  lament  for  Lycidas,  in  the  imagining  of  the 
Saints'  paradise,  and  Tennyson  in  "In  Memoriam"  finds 
it  in  a  pantheistic  faith  of  the  eternity  of  love  in  union 
with  the  living  divine  will,  and  Shelley  finds  it  in 
"Adonais"  in  the  hoped-for  escape  and  near  flight  of  his 
own  soul  into  that  world  whither  Adonais  has  gone  and 
from  which  the  soul  of  Keats  "beacons"  to  him  like  a 


34  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

Star  out  of  eternity;  or,  in  a  different  field,  Shelley  finds 
repose  for  the  passion  of  humanity  in  that  millennium 
which  he  invents  and  sings  in  the  fourth  act  of  "Prome- 
theus Unbound."  In  short  lyrics,  however,  the  repose  is 
often  a  mere  katharsis  or  relief,  an  exhaustion  with  peace 
following  on  the  subsidence  of  the  emotion,  and  theoreti- 
cally in  a  complete  lyric  this  point  should  be  reached.  It 
is  reached  in  Burns'  "Highland  Mary"  in  the  thought  of 
her  eternal  presence  in  his  memory;  it  is  reached  in  Keats' 
"Nightingale"  and  in  Shelley's  Naples'  poem;  on  the 
other  hand  it  is  often  not  reached,  as  in  Shelley's  "Indian 
Serenade,"  where  the  poem  ends  on  a  note  of  climbing 
passion,  though  the  picture  is  of  the  exhausted  and  faint- 
ing lover.  The  type  of  the  lyric  that  finds  no  repose  — 
the  type  of  desire  in  the  broad  sense,  of  all  desire  as 
such,  is  in  the  lines  — 

"The  desire  of  the  moth  for  the  star, 
Of  the  night  for  the  morrow  — 
The  devotion  to  something  afar 
From  the  sphere  of  our  sorrow!" 

These  are  the  last  lines  of  the  poem  to  which  they  be- 
long —  a  poem  ending  on  the  climbing  note.  The  mys- 
tery of  human  desire  has  found  no  purer  expression  than 
in  these  lines.  Lyric  poetry  in  general  tells  the  fate  of 
that  desire  through  the  wide  range  of  its  many  forms, 
brief  or  extended,  the  love-song,  the  elegy,  the  choral  ode, 
and  if  sometimes  it  sings  songs  of  triumph  like  Miriam 
and  epithalamiums  of  happy  consummation  like  Spenser, 
yet  more  often  its  burden  is  of  failure,  of  the  thwarted 
life  and  the  unfulfilled  dream;  and  even  in  the  grander 
forms  of  the  drama  and  the  epic,  poetry,  using  the  lyrical 
note  and  embodying  the  passion  of  man,  sets  forth  the 
same  lesson  of  the  resurrection  of  that  which  springs 


LYRICAL   POETRY  35 

eternally  futile  in  the  human  breast,  —  the  double  lesson 
of  love's  infinite  despair  and  life's  infinite  hope. 

This  deep  note  of  intense  lyrical  passion  will  be  felt 
by  the  reader  only  in  proportion  to  the  richness  and  pro- 
fundity of  his  own  life  and  his  capacity  to  be  so  moved. 
Such  poetry  gives  itself,  if  at  all,  unsought,  by  virtue  of 
its  inner  intimacy  with  the  experience  of  the  reader;  ap- 
preciation of  it  is  not  arrived  at  by  study,  though  study 
in  the  sense  of  attentive  contemplation,  of  dwelling  on  the 
poem,  may  assist  in  finer  appreciation  of  it.  The  larger 
part  of  brief  verse,  however,  makes  no  such  demand  upon 
the  reader;  much  of  it,  and  much  that  is  most  useful, 
lies  in  the  realm  of  the  affections,  of  incident  and  action. 
The  lyric  naturally  lends  itself  to  the  representation  of 
dramatic  moments  and  to  the  interpretation  of  character 
in  vivid  ways.  It  is  thus  that  Browning  habitually  em- 
ploys it.  The  lyric  is  limited  in  length  according  to  the 
intensity  of  its  feeling;  the  more  intense,  the  more  brief. 
This  does  not  involve  denying  that  a  long  poem  may  be 
essentially  lyrical.  Passion  in  life  is,  at  times,  a  prolonged 
and  varied  experience,  but  in  such  a  case  it  proceeds  by 
moments  of  high  feeling  separated  by  periods  of  repose. 
It  is  for  this  reason  that  such  experience  is  rendered  by 
a  succession  of  lyrics  which  in  their  sequence  compose  a 
complete  poem.  Tennyson's  "In  Memoriam"  is  thus 
built  up  of  "swallow-flights  of  song";  his  "Maud"  is 
similarly  constructed;  Shakespeare's  "Sonnets"  afford 
another  passionate  example.  It  remains  true  that  these 
poems  and  others  like  them  make  their  impression  rather 
by  their  detail  than  as  a  whole,  and  are  remembered  and 
enjoyed  by  their  fragmentary  parts,  by  special  passages 
and  units  of  the  series;  they  are  to  be  read  in  rather  than 
to  be  read  through,  or  if  perused  consecutively  they  are 


36  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

seldom  to  be  finished  at  one  sitting.  Only  the  hardened 
scholar  can  read  an  Elizabethan  sonnet  sequence  without 
taking  breath,  and  then  with  little  pleasure.  The  lyric, 
however,  lengthens  naturally  in  the  elegy  such  as 
''Adonais,"  in  the  tale  such  as  ^'Marmion,"  and  in  a  poem 
of  meditation  such  as  ''Childe  Harold's  Pilgrimage";  and 
it  takes  on  a  high  organic  form  in  the  dramatic  sphere, 
though  with  aid  from  non-lyrical  elements,  of  which  the 
great  example  in  English  is  Shelley's  "Prometheus  Un- 
bound." It  is  by  familiarity  with  its  brief  forms  and  a 
thorough  appreciation  of  these  that  the  rather  exceptional 
power  of  enjoying  and  appropriating  a  long  lyrical  poem 
is  gained.  The  better  way  of  approach  to  lyrical  poetry 
is  by  the  use  of  anthologies,  but  preferably  by  anthologies 
of  a  single  poet  than  by  those  which  contain  selections 
from  many  authors.  It  is  seldom  useful  to  read  all  the 
works  of  a  poet  at  the  start;  the  best  writings  of  each 
have  already  been  sifted  out  by  consent,  and  are  easily 
obtained  by  themselves;  but  in  anthologies  confined  to  one 
poet  personality  still  binds  the  poems  together,  they  re- 
flect light  one  upon  another,  and  by  their  inward  simi- 
larities they  enforce  the  peculiar  traits  of  the  poet,  deepen 
the  impression,  and  give  an  increasing  power  of  apprecia- 
tion along  the  lines  of  his  special  powers  and  sensibilities. 
If  the  poet  is  to  be  a  favorite  and  to  make  an  engrossing 
and  almost  private  appeal  to  the  reader,  the  acquaintance 
with  the  complete  works  will  become  a  necessity  and  be 
self-enforced  by  the  taste  that  has  been  formed;  until 
then  it  can  well  wait.  It  is  seldom  that  an  anthology  in- 
cluding many  writers  possesses  any  such  unity.  Pal- 
grave's  "Golden  Treasury"  is  exceptional  in  this  regard; 
it  has  the  felicity  of  being  an  expression  of  the  English 
genius  in  poetry,  and  of  so  containing  an  individuality, 


LYRICAL    POETRY  37 

with  powers  of  mutual  reflection  of  part  to  part  and  of 
an  increment  of  significance  to  the  whole,  similar  to  that 
in  one  man's  works.  The  "Greek  Anthology"  is  likewise 
unified  by  racial  genius.  The  criticism  offered  by  Pal- 
grave  in  his  notes,  which  are  usually  neglected,  is  also 
singularly  admirable,  compact,  clear,  penetrating  and 
governed  by  a  just  taste.  It  contains  indeed  in  its  small 
limits  almost  an  education  in  poetic  taste.  A  similarly 
remarkable  aid  for  the  lighter  forms  of  verse,  including 
guiding  criticism  and  a  characterization  of  the  artistic 
form,  is  given  by  Frederick  Lockyer  in  a  final  note  to  his 
own  poems;  it  suffices  of  itself  to  direct  the  reader 
through  the  whole  field.  Such  criticism  as  is  afforded  by 
these  two  writers,  so  modestly  put  forth  as  to  be  almost 
hidden,  is  very  rare,  and  the  reader  should  avail  himself 
of  it  for  cultivation  and  information.  To  apprehend  the 
spirit  of  lyrical  poetry  Shelley's  "Defence  of  Poetry" 
should  be  read;  to  understand  some  of  its  ends  and  means 
in  practice  Wordsworth's  "Prefaces"  are  still  the  most 
useful  declaration  of  its  principles. 

To  these  hints  and  suggestions  as  to  the  nature  of 
lyrical  poetry  and  the  modes  of  approach  to  it  a  final  ^^  y^ 
counsel  may  be  added.  It  unlocks  emotion,  and  pours  it  '^  ^ 
in  free  and  eloquent  forms  in  an  imaginary  world;  it 
teaches  the  wise  and  beautiful  behavior  of  the  soul  in  its 
emotional  life.  The  scene  is  imaginary,  but  the  emotion 
is  real;  and  it  may  be  more  than  a  sympathetic  emotion; 
it  may  so  repeat  the  reader's  experience  and  express  his 
actual  self  as  to  be  personal  and  his  own  as  if  he  had 
written  the  poem.  This  is  the  test  of  success  with  the 
reader,  that  he  shall  seem  to  have  written  the  book.  If, 
however,  the  emotion  remains  only  sympathetic,  it  opens 
to  the  reader  the  large  passion  of  the  world's  life,  the 


38  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

hopes  and  fears  of  his  kind  and  the  modes  of  man^s  con- 
solation. It  is  thus  that  he  becomes  humanized,  and 
adds  to  his  own  life  the  life  which  is  that  of  man.  Emo- 
tion so  felt  may  not  necessarily  result  directly  in  action; 
but  it  results  in  character;  it  softens,  refines  and  ennobles 
the  soul,  and  it  illuminates  life  for  the  intellect.  In  that 
self-development  which  every  live  spirit  seeks,  the  power 
of  emotion  is  a  main  part  of  the  capacity  to  live  and 
know  and  understand.  In  the  private  experience  of  a 
cultivated  man  the  imaginary  life,  lived  in  art  and  dream 
and  the  stirring  of  the  thousand  susceptibilities  of  his 
nature  that  never  pass  from  his  consciousness  outward 
but  are  shut  in  his  own  silent  world,  is  a  large  part  of 
reality  to  him,  in  the  strict  sense,  —  it  is  his  larger  life, 
the  life  of  the  soul.  Lyrical  poetry  holds  its  high  place 
by  virtue  of  its  power  to  nourish  such  a  life. 


CHAPTER  III 

NARRATIVE  POETRY 

The  second  great  division  of  experience  is  action;  it  is 
rendered  in  the  ideal  forms  of  literary  art  most  purely  by 
the  epic  and  the  drama;  in  the  first  the  action  is  related, 
in  the  second  it  is  represented.  It  is  not  necessary  for 
the  beginner  to  enter  upon  the  esthetic  theory  of  these  two 
modes  of  literature;  his  business  is  rather  to  make  an 
acquaintance  with  the  books,  to  have  a  first  view  of  their 
contents,  than  to  analyze  their  philosophic  structure. 
Epic  and  drama,  too,  are  only  the  highest  forms  of  the 
literature  of  action;  narrative  poetry  includes  much  that 
can  hardly  be  characterized  as  epic,  and  it  is  convenient 
to  treat  under  this  head  poetry  which  is  not  strictly  a 
narration  of  action,  but  which  describes  or  sets  forth  ex- 
perience at  length,  such  as  Virgil's  "Georgics,"  Lucretius, 
or  the  long  poems  of  Wordsworth.  The  most  easy  intro- 
duction to  narrative  poetry  in  English  is  by  means  of 
Scott's  tales  in  verse,  romantic  in  atmosphere,  gallant  in 
action  and  swift  in  movement;  their  objective  realism, 
similar  to  that  of  man's  earliest  poetry,  is  a  point  of  great 
advantage,  and  assists  immediate  appreciation  by  simple 
and  untrained  minds.  Byron's  "Tales"  which  naturally 
follow  are  more  full  of  adventure  and  passion,  melo- 
dramatic, and  as  they  in  their  time  outrivaled  and  silenced 
Scott's  saner  genius,  they  still  in  the  reading  are  more 
effective  in  rousing  and  exciting  the  mind;  but  Scott's 

39 


40  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

tales  have  shown  the  more  enduring  quality,  possibly, 
after  all,  and  are  more  widely  popular.  If  there  be  in. 
the  reader  any  capacity  to  be  stirred  by  romantic  narra- 
tive, these  two  poets  will  bring  it  forth  without  fail;  and 
the  entrance  on  the  path  once  being  made,  the  way  on- 
ward has  an  open  career  by  many  issues.  Concurrently 
with  the  tale  of  adventure  the  romantic  life  of  nature  may 
well  be  approached  as  it  is  set  forth,  for  example,  in 
Longfellow's  "Hiawatha,"  which  appeals  to  simple  poetic 
tastes  requiring  a  high  degree  of  objective  reality  in  a 
poem.  It  is  a  poem  in  which  nature  is  so  romantically 
presented  as  to  become  almost  a  fresh  creation  of  the 
wilderness  and  a  renewal  of  primitive  life;  it  gives  great 
pleasure  to  the  young  and  is  an  admirable  approach  to 
the  poetical  view  of  nature  which  in  modern  English  verse 
is  so  fundamental,  engrossing  and  various  in  its  results. 

Though  it  is  not  comnionly  thought  to  be  the  case, 
it  is  likely  that  the  longer  poems  of  Wordsworth,  'The 
Prelude"  and  "The  Excursion,"  are  more  available  in 
developing  this  point  of  view  and  habit  of  mind  than  is 
supposed.  Wordsworth  is  usually  a  favorite  poet  with 
young  students,  and  he  especially  appeals  to  the  quieter 
and  self-commanded  temperaments,  to  whom  the  abandon 
of  intenser  masters  is  unnatural;  his  moods  are  more  even 
with  life,  his  message  is  plain,  and  in  all  ways  he  is  a 
most  accessible  poet  to  those  less  poetically  inclined. 
"The  Prelude"  and  "The  Excursion"  are  regarded  as 
tedious  poems,  and  to  have  read  them  is  commonly  con- 
sidered a  victorious  trial  of  the  spirit.  I  frankly  confess 
to  wishing  that  they  were  longer  than  they  are.  The  two 
poems  together  present  the  poetic  history  of  an  extraor- 
dinarily sensitive  and  masculine  mind,  and  such  an  auto- 
biography of  a  poet's  introduction  to  life  may  well  be 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  41 

full  of  useful  lights  on  the  things  of  the  poetic  life,  espe- 
cially for  the  reader  who  is  himself  just  entering  on  that 
life  and  who  realizes  that  it  is  indeed  a  life  and  not  merely 
a  study  that  he  is  entering  on.  These  poems  contain  a 
fund  of  great  truths  relating  to  that  life  nowhere  else  so 
well  coordinated  and  set  forth  in  coherency  with  lifers 
whole. 

Preeminent  among  these  traits  is  that  of  the  function 
of  nature  in  giving  a  scale  to  life,  some  sort  of  perspective 
in  which  man  may  take  a  relative  measure  of  himself  and 
of  his  mortal  career.  In  the  mere  massiveness  of  nature, 
in  the  comparative  eternity  of  her  life  in  the  elements  of 
air,  earth  and  ocean,  in  the  impressive  tumult  and  the 
no  less  impressive  peace  of  her  changing  moods  from 
day  to  day,  in  the  vast  power  and  certainty  of  her  life- 
processes  in  sunlight,  the  succession  of  the  seasons  and 
the  phenomena  of  the  death  and  birth  of  things  in  multi- 
tude of  being,  —  in  all  this  there  is  the  sense  of  that 
infinite  in  opposition  to  which  man  recognizes  his  own 
finitude.  One  who  lives  in  comparative  solitude,  like  the 
dalesmen  whom  Wordsworth  knew,  always  in  the  pres- 
ence of  nature,  has  close  at  hand  an  unceasing  correction 
of  that  egotism  that  grows  up  in  cities,  —  in  the  sphere, 
that  is,  where  human  energies  seem  to  occupy  the  scene, 
and  the  ambitions  and  worldly  aims  of  men  seem  to  be 
all  in  all.  Napoleon,  absorbed  in  the  spectacle  and  mas- 
tery of  merely  human  things,  there  where  human  qualities 
of  intelligence,  force  and  strategy  count  for  most,  may 
seem  even  to  himself  a  kind  of  demigod  whom  life  obeys; 
but  the  dalesman,  constantly  in  the  sight  of  the  hills  and 
streams  and  their  tempests,  constantly  aware  of  the  con- 
ditioning might  of  nature  in  harvest  and  herds,  constantly 
open  to  the  inflowing  on  his  soul  of  the  mysterious 


42  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

agencies  of  cloud  and  sunshine,  of  darkness  and  peril, 
and  of  the  various  beneficence  as  well  as  of  the  hard  re- 
buffs of  nature,  retains  the  true  sane  sense  of  humanity 
as  a  creature.  So  Wordsworth  presents  the  case,  in  de- 
scribing the  advantage  of  the  countryman  over  the  dweller 
in  cities,  and  of  a  life  led  in  alliance  with  nature  over  the 
life  of  the  market  and  the  court.  The  idea  is  not  unlike 
that  belonging  to  Greek  tragedy.  The  spectacle  of 
tragedy  in  the  lives  of  kings  and  princes  and  favorites  of 
the  gods,  which  was  the  sort  that  the  Greek  stage  habitu- 
ally presented,  was  believed  to  be  wholesome  for  the 
ordinary  body  of  spectators,  because  they  thereby  found 
a  scale  of  misfortune  so  much  exceeding  anything  in  their 
own  lives  that  their  mishaps  appeared  not  only  more 
bearable  but  really  of  slight  importance.  In  comparison 
with  the  woes  of  Agamemnon  or  GEdipus,  their  own  lives 
were  felicity.  In  the  same  way,  if  one  has  the  scale  of 
nature  in  continual  sight,  he  lives  with  the  infinite  of 
power  and  the  infinite  of  repose  close  to  him,  and  he  is 
thereby  kept  humble  in  thought,  and  an  anodyne  of  peace 
steals  into  his  soul  to  quiet,  to  console  and  heal.  Nature 
thus  first  dilates  the  mind  with  her  own  spectacle,  gives 
to  it  touches  of  her  own  infinitude,  and  yet  preserves  the 
mind's  humility  at  the  very  moment  that  it  adds  to  the 
mind's  majesty  in  living;  and  next  it  tranquilizes  the  soul 
in  mortal  grief.  In  its  most  common  form,  then,  and 
for  all,  even  unlettered  men,  nature  is  the  familiar  pres- 
ence of  the  infinite;  and  those  who  live  in  its  presence 
truly  find  at  once  and  without  effort,  find  in  boyhood  and 
youth  in  an  unconscious  process,  that  scale  of  the  infinite 
for  their  lives,  which  the  soul  needs  in  order  to  be  truly 
born.  This  is  the  doctrine  which  is  elaborated  in  the 
"Prelude"  and  illustrated  in  the  "Excursion,"  permeating 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  43 

both  poems;  and  it  is  presented  both  externally  in  the  lives 
of  the  dalesmen,  and  personally  as  the  life  of  Words- 
worth^s  dawning  mind.  If  the  doctrine  be  well  appre- 
hended, it  is  of  itself  a  large  preparation  for  the  poetic 
life  which  lies  in  the  appreciation  of  modern  poetry,  so 
far  as  the  description  and  interpretation  of  nature  enter 
into  it;  and  in  all  its  narrative  poetry  this  is  a  large 
element. 

Narrative  poetry,  such  as  that  of  Scott,  Byron  and 
Wordsworth,  is  found  in  great  profusion  in  literature 
and  is  of  every  degree  of  merit.  It  does  not  differ  in  its 
kind  of  interest  from  the  record  of  similar  experience  or 
reflection  upon  experience  in  prose,  and  much  of  it  indeed 
is  a  survival  in  a  late  age  of  the  habits  of  that  early 
period  when,  prose  not  having  been  developed,  poetry  was 
the  normal  mode  of  all  literary  composition.  That  is  one 
reason  why  so  large  a  part  of  narrative  poetry  is  quickly 
dead.  The  poetic  form  gives  condensation,  speed  and 
brilliancy  to  narrative,  but  in  general  the  narrative  suc- 
ceeds in  proportion  to  its  brevity.  It  requires  a  master 
of  narrative  like  Chaucer  to  maintain  interest  in  poetic 
fiction;  and  as  a  rule,  narrative  poems,  owing  to  the 
difficulty  of  sustaining  emotional  interest  for  a  prolonged 
time,  are  remembered  by  their  glowing,  picturesque  and 
romantic  passages.  The  breaking  up  of  long  poems  into 
books  and  cantos,  or  into  single  adventures  separately 
treated  as  by  Tennyson,  is  a  device  to  avoid  this  difficulty. 
In  prose  the  telling  of  a  story  as  such  is  more  facile  and 
generally  more  effective;  if  a  modern  narrative  in  verse 
succeeds,  it  is  by  virtue  of  something  besides  the  story. 
The  literature  of  all  nations  is  strewn  with  the  stranded 
wrecks  of  poetic  narratives,  from  the  times  of  Greece 
through  the  interminable  garrulity  of  the  middle  ages  and 


44  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

the  spawning  epics  of  the  south  of  Europe  down  to  the 
days  of  Southey.  In  its  rivalry  with  prose,  poetic  narra- 
tive succeeds  only  by  emotional  intensity,  as  in  Keats,  or 
by  some  romance  in  the  tale  favored  by  grace  in  the 
telling. 

The  truth  is  that  poetic  narrative  in  its  great  examples, 
those  that  are  supreme  works  of  the  race,  is  much  more 
than  simple  narration  of  an  action,  description  of  a  scene, 
or  meditation  upon  a  theme.  The  epic  exceeds  these 
lesser  poems  by  virtue  of  being  a  summary  of  times  past, 
of  civilizations  entire,  of  phases  of  man's  long  abiding 
moods  of  contemplating  life;  the  epic  contains  the  genius 
of  the  race  that  produces  it,  and  is  the  attempt  of  that 
race  to  realize  its  dream  of  what  it  has  been,  is  and  shall 
be,  not  in  any  practical  achievement  in  the  real  world  but 
in  its  own  consciousness  of  its  ideals.  They  belong  to 
the  most  impersonal  of  man's  works;  they  are  social 
poems,  condensations  of  broad  human  life  into  which 
centuries  are  compressed,  landmarks  of  the  progress  of 
the  race  through  change.  If  the  poet  individually  writes 
them,  they  are  no  less  the  combination  of  ages  of  tradi- 
tion, its  product  and  embodiment.  In  the  earlier  examples 
the  tradition  is  national;  in  Homer  and  Virgil,  it  is  Greek 
and  Roman  genius  that  are  treasured  up;  but  in  later 
writers  it  is  rather  the  tradition  of  the  civilization  to 
which  they  belong  than  the  pure  national  tradition  that  is 
expressed.  In  English  the  great  examples  are  three, 
Spenser's  "Faery  Queene,"  Milton's  "Paradise  Lost"  and 
Tennyson's  "Idyls  of  the  King."  The  first  and  second 
are  poems  of  the  Renaissance  spirit,  and  involve,  one  the 
tradition  of  chivalry  and  the  middle  age,  the  other  that  of 
Christian  story  and  antiquity,  while  Tennyson  resumes 
the  Arthurian  legend.    It  is  obvious  that  such  poems  re- 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  45 

quire  in  the  reader  much  preparation  by  study  before 
they  can  be  intelligently  read;  for  such  reading  there  must 
be  a  knowledge  of  Scripture,  mythology  and  chivalry  in 
particular,  but  also  much  besides.  These  poems  are,  in 
truth,  the  most  fascinating  form  of  history,  and  perhaps 
its  most  efficient  form;  and  as  the  English  kings  are  most 
humanly  known  in  Shakespeare,  past  history  in  general 
is  most  alive  in  the  epics  that  sum  it  up  imaginatively 
and  interpret  it  in  terms  of  the  immortal  spirit  of  man. 
Actual  history,  life  as  it  was,  is  to  this  reincarnation  of  it 
in  poetry  merely  dead  annals;  like  the  excavated  ruins 
of  Troy,  in  comparison  with  the  Iliad,  —  a  desolation, 
debris,  a  thing  of  the  gray  annihilation  of  time.  The 
power  of  historical  imagination  is,  therefore,  indispen- 
sable to  the  reader,  whose  assimilation  of  the  poem  will 
be  proportionate  to  his  exercise  of  it.  For  each  of  the 
great  epics  there  is  a  stock  of  interpretative  and  illustra- 
tive criticism  easily  accessible  and  admirably  ordered; 
but  after  all  aids  have  done  their  utmost,  the  reader  is 
still  keenly  aware  of  the  dividing  power  of  time  which 
corrodes  and  effaces  the  material  of  the  poem,  impairs 
sympathy  and  not  seldom  transforms  its  original  charm 
into  charm  of  another  sort  which,  however  attractive,  he 
knows  to  be  different.  This  difficulty  of  complete  com- 
prehension is  greater  as  he  approaches  foreign  epics  and 
those  of  antiquity.  Tasso  is,  perhaps,  most  nigh  with 
his  "Jerusalem  Delivered";  for  Ariosto's  ^'Orlando 
Furioso"  a  special  culture  is  necessary;  and  Camoens,  in 
his  "Lusiads,"  is  perhaps  the  most  unseizable  of  the 
moderns.  Dante's  "Divine  Comedy"  requires  prolonged 
study;  Lowell  said,  somewhat  hyperbolically,  that  the 
thirteenth  century  existed  to  annotate  this  poem,  but  by 
the  phrase  he  conveyed  a  truth  and  indicated  the  immense 


46  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

significance  of  the  poem.  Notwithstanding  their  distance 
in  time,  Virgil  and  Homer  still  remain  near  to  the  classi- 
cally educated  reader,  one  by  virtue  of  his  temperament, 
the  other  by  his  reality;  both,  besides  their  powerful  his- 
torical interpretation  of  race,  engage  human  interest 
deeply  in  romantic  forms.  The  epics,  in  their  true  signifi- 
cance, are  only  for  strong  minds.  They  afford,  however, 
the  best  introduction  to  a  foreign  literature  or  to  that  of 
a  past  stage  of  culture.  They  involve  such  an  illumina- 
tion of  the  period  and  yield  such  an  insight  into  the  racial 
qualities  and  career  of  the  peoples  whose  ideals  they 
summarize  that  the  entire  literature  of  those  nations  in 
other  forms  becomes  intelligible,  capable  of  appreciation, 
provocative  of  sympathy  to  as  high  a  degree  as  it  is  pos- 
sible to  reach.  It  is  seldom  that  a  foreigner  ever  appre- 
ciates literature  as  a  native,  owing  to  the  barriers  of 
language  and  the  difference  in  heredity,  education  and 
race  genius;  but  it  is  in  the  epics,  which  have  indeed  a 
more  cosmopolitan  character  than  other  forms  of  litera- 
ture through  the  community  of  their  literary  tradition, 
that  the  genius  of  a  nation  or  the  spirit  of  a  long  age  is 
most  thoroughly  and  deeply  felt  and  perceived.  No 
literary  study  is  on  the  whole  more  fruitful  in  broadening 
the  mind  and  sympathies  by  forcing  them  to  range  widely 
in  the  history  of  the  human  spirit  and  to  observe  its 
modes  in  distant  times  and  contrasted  ages  and  in  nations 
of  high  achievement.  It  is  through  them  that  the  con- 
ception of  world-literature,  as  opposed  to  special  litera- 
tures, most  readily  begins  to  form. 

The  epic  even  in  its  greatest  examples  does  not  escape 
from  the  general  difficulty  of  narrative  poetry  in  sustain- 
ing interest  for  a  long  time.  Homer  nods,  and  his  suc- 
cessors inherited  the  weakness  with  the  art. '  Every  device 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  47 

has,  nevertheless,  been  availed  of  to  avoid  such  defects  of 
tediousness  or  of  waning  interest.  The  art  of  narrative 
is  carried  to  its  highest  point  in  the  manner  of  presenting 
the  story,  of  displaying  the  characters,  of  interweaving 
episodes,  of  varying  the  matter,  contrasting  it,  heighten- 
ing it;  and  one  result  is  that  the  epics  are  remembered 
by  their  eloquent  passages,  their  dramatic  moments,  their 
episodes,  and  their  highly  finished  parts  rather  than  as 
wholes;  it  is,  perhaps,  only  by  the  scholar  that  the  effect 
of  the  work  as  a  whole  is  felt  and  its  unities  recognized. 
In  writing  it  each  new  poet  has  availed  himself  of  all 
that  has  gone  before,  and  has  freely  imitated,  incorpor- 
ated and  rewritten  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  so  that 
the  art  gained  cumulative  power  in  a  remarkable  measure, 
and  this  not  only  by  the  use  of  old  modes  and  resources 
but  by  an  appropriation  of  the  substance  itself  by  means 
of  translation  or  imitation  that  was  equivalent  to  direct 
copy  though  often  accompanied  by  improvement.  The 
epics  have  a  family  resemblance,  and  show  their  descent 
by  their  features.  It  is  instructive  to  notice  also,  in  their 
succession,  how  they  reflect  the  growth  of  civilization  by 
their  increasing  social  complexity,  the  softening  of  their 
manners,  the  development  of  the  element  of  love  in  con- 
trast to  war,  the  changes  in  their  divine  scheme,  the 
refinement  in  moral  ideals,  and,  in  general,  the  inwardness 
of  the  life  they  set  forth  in  proportion  as  the  world  ripens 
in  time  at  the  season  of  their  coming.  No  part  of  litera- 
ture reflects  so  clearly  and  continuously  the  gradual  spirit- 
ualization  of  human  life  in  the  evolution  of  our  Western 
civilization.  It  is  not,  however,  its  narrative  art,  its 
brilliant  passages,  its  record  of  social  and  spiritual  prog- 
ress, and  still  less  is  it  the  mere  tale  of  love  and  war 
in  their  individual  accidents,  that  have  gained  for  the 


48  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

epics  the  high  esteem,  and  indeed  veneration,  in  which 
they  are  held.  This  proceeds  from  the  fact  that  the  epic 
poets  knew  how  to  set  forth  the  tale  so  that  it  should  be 
a  tissue  of  that  symbolical  truth  which  is  the  stuff  of  all 
great  literature,  and  so  to  present  the  story  of  a  great 
design,  like  the  siege  of  Troy  or  the  founding  of  Rome, 
or  of  a  great  event  like  the  fall  of  man,  or  of  a  great  ad- 
venture like  that  of  Spenser's  knights  or  Camoens'  sailors, 
in  such  a  way  that  while  true  in  its  individual  traits  it 
should  also  represent  and  express  the  fates  of  human  life 
in  general  as  they  were  seen  and  known;  they  told  a  tale, 
not  of  men's  lives,  but  of  man's  life,  and  of  man's  life  at 
its  highest  energy,  luster  and  endurance,  its  utmost  power 
of  life.  Achilles  was  such  a  man  as  every  Greek  would 
wish  to  be  in  action,  and  the  tale  was  of  what  was  possible 
to  such  a  man,  for  triumph  and  for  sorrow,  in  life  as  the 
Greek  knew  it.  The  breadth  of  interpretation  achieved, 
such  that  the  poem  was  the  expression  of  a  race,  an  age, 
a  great  mood  of  life  acting  and  suffering,  was  the  measure 
of  its  catholic  power  to  express  life,  to  define  its  for- 
tunes, to  unload  its  burdens,  to  declare  its  meaning.  This 
is  ideal  truth,  as  poetic  art  knows  it,  written  large. 

One  does  not  go  far  in  literature  in  any  direction  with- 
out coming  into  deep  waters,  —  a  fact  that  the  study  of 
the  epic  quickly  reveals.  Without  entering  upon  esthetic 
theory  in  detail  or  developing  the  philosophical  interest 
of  the  epic  fully,  it  is  of  use  to  glance  at  the  moral  signifi- 
cance of  epic  poetry  in  which  so  much  of  its  power  lies. 
The  epic  is  a  high  organic  form  of  art,  and  this  form  is 
realized  with  different  degrees  of  fullness  and  clearness  in 
different  examples.  It  is  grounded  on  the  operation  of 
the  will,  which  is  the  source  of  action;  and  in  the  epic 
form  it  is  the  social  will  that  is  contemplated,  organized 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  49 

in  the  life  of  nations.  The  epic  centers  about  a  collision 
which  takes  place  in  the  social  sphere  rather  than  in  that 
of  personal  life,  and  it  has  an  historical  basis  or  one  that 
is  accepted  as  historical.  The  conflict  is  between  opposed 
nations  or  races,  in  which  different  ideas  of  civilization 
challenge  each  other  to  deadly  encounter.  It  is  some- 
times stated  that  these  are  opposed,  as  a  higher  to  a 
lower  civilization,  a  higher  to  a  lower  will;  and  as  the 
will  of  the  social  group  is  always  interpreted  by  the 
members  of  that  group  as  being  the  will  of  its  ruling  and 
providential  gods,  it  is  often  represented  that  in  the  epic 
the  divine  will  is  involved,  and  adds  its  power  of  victory 
to  the  winning  arms,  overthrowing  the  lower  will  of  a 
barbarous  and  profane  foe.  Thus  the  conflict  of  Greece 
with  Troy,  of  the  fates  of  Rome  with  the  Carthaginian 
and  the  Italian,  of  the  arms  of  the  Crusaders  with  the 
Saracen,  of  the  genius  of  Portugal  with  the  Moslem,  of 
the  soul  with  sense  in  Spenser's  and  in  Tennyson's 
knights,  of  Satan  with  the  Omnipotent  in  Milton's  legend 
of  creation,  —  all  these  involve  the  divine  will  in  one  or 
another  mode  of  its  manifestation  through  human  for- 
tunes. In  the  "Iliad"  it  is  natural  to  think  of  the  Greeks 
as  the  embodiment  of  the  higher  civilization  and  the  de- 
fenders of  the  better  cause;  in  the  "^Eneid,"  as  the  mind 
looks  back  on  the  vast  beneficence  of  Rome  as  the  unifier 
and  legislator  of  the  Mediterranean  world  and  the  civilizer 
of  the  barbarous  North,  it  is  likewise  natural  to  regard 
the  fortunes  of  ^Eneas  as  the  fates  of  the  future,  and  the 
triumph  of  Rome  over  all  peoples,  as  the  victory  of  that 
Providence  which  was  then  known  as  the  divine  will  of 
Jupiter,  the  Olympian;  in  the  Christian  epics  a  like  view 
is  less  a  preconception  of  our  minds  than  a  part  of  our 
idea  of  the  world.    Optimism,  the  final  victory  of  the 


50  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 

best,  would  seem  to  belong  to  the  epic  and  to  be  contained 
in  its  very  idea. 

Yet,  as  in  lyrical  poetry  the  prevailing  tone  is  of  sad- 
ness, so  in  the  epic  the  story  is  one  of  the  sorrows  of 
mankind.  Tragedy  stamps  them  from  the  first  line  of 
the  "Iliad"  to  the  farewell  of  the  dying  Arthur.  It  is  ob- 
vious at  once  that  in  all  epics  the  side  that  loses  finds  its 
career  one  of  pure  tragedy,  and  in  its  fall  bears  always 
deeply  graved  the  tragic  mark  of  fatality.  The  defeat 
of  the  Trojans,  the  defeat  of  Turnus,  the  defeat  of  any 
beaten  cause  has  this  trait  in  a  marked  form,  and  this  is 
the  more  clearly  felt  in  proportion  as  the  fatality  em- 
bodied in  the  new  power  of  the  victors  is  also  represented 
as  the  working  of  the  divine  will  adding  its  supreme  might 
to  that  power.  The  issue  for  the  conquered  is  not  merely 
defeat,  but  the  tragic  issue  of  death,  complete  extinction, 
the  funeral  pyre  of  Hector,  the  ashes  of  Troy.  The 
principle  of  repose  invoked  to  complete  the  work  of  art 
is  that  of  tragic  repose,  death.  The  tragic  mark  also  ap- 
pears in  the  apparent  injustice  done  to  a  noble  nature, 
for  it  is  not  felt  that  Hector  deserves  his  fate;  he  is  a 
victim  of  the  adverse  gods,  the  same  that  Turnus  feared 
in  his  last  mortal  struggle.  Nor  is  the  tragic  note  con- 
fined to  the  beaten  cause.  In  the  victorious  cause  tragedy 
has  a  large  field  all  its  own.  The  price  of  the  victory  of 
the  divine  will,  or  of  the  higher  civilization,  is  in  all  these 
great  poems  a  tragic  price,  and  is  the  more  plainly  and 
openly  so  in  proportion  to  the  height  of  the  poem.  In 
this  impression  the  epic  faithfully  repeats  that  historic 
experience  which  it  records  and  idealizes;  it  is  grounded, 
as  all  poetry  is,  in  life;  and,  still,  as  we  mark  the  doomed 
nations  and  races  going  into  extinction,  see  them  pressed 
westward  to  the  seas  and  decimated  and  engulfed,  it  is 


NARRATIVE    POETRY  51 

little  joy  to  the  mind  to  contemplate  the  victory  of  the 
will  of  civilization  thus  enforced  by  battle-axe  and  cannon 
over  the  weaker  and  less  fortunate  tribes  of  men.  Sacri- 
fice is  a  word  writ  large  in  the  epical  life,  —  sacrifice  of 
both  victor  and  vanquished.  It  is  obvious  that  the  op- 
timism of  the  epic  lies  in  the  efficacy  of  the  sacrifice,  that 
is,  in  the  validity  of  the  idea  of  social  progress. 

As  the  epic  enters  the  religious  sphere,  it  develops  its 
central  conceptions  of  human  life  most  remarkably.  Here 
it  unfolds  the  most  tragic  situation  that  it  has  been  given 
to  man  to  conceive.  It  is  nothing  less  than  the  notion 
that  in  the  confused  field  of  human  action  there  is  a 
supreme  and  fatal  collision  between  the  human  will  as 
such  and  the  divine  will  in  omnipotence.  At  all  times, 
even  in  the  barbaric  past,  there  have  been  what  men 
thought  of  as  collisions  between  men  and  the  gods, — 
there  have  been  blasphemy  and  sacrilege;  but  the  reason, 
which  finds  its  career  in  generalization,  has  here,  if  any- 
where, carried  its  generalizing  power  to  the  madness  of 
extremes,  and  evolved  the  theory  that  not  men,  but  man, 
not  individuals  of  exceptional  wickedness  but  the  race, 
is  in  opposition  to  God  by  virtue  of  the  human  will  in  its 
essence  being  in  conflict  with  the  divine  will,  and  this 
doctrine  is  summed  up  in  the  notion  of  original  sin.  In 
this  idea  the  tragic  element  is  present  in  all  its  phases; 
tragedy  is  complete.  Fate,  or  necessity,  constrains  the 
victim  by  his  own  nature  which  is  already  born  into  this 
collision  and  finds  the  struggle  predetermined;  over- 
whelming defeat  accompanies  the  struggle;  and  the  end, 
the  tragic  repose,  comes,  not  only  in  mortal  death,  but 
in  that  extinction  of  the  will  itself  which  is  involved  in 
the  conception  of  damnation.  This  is  the  essential,  the 
spiritual  tragedy  of  mankind,  looked  at  from  the  darker 


52  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

side.  On  the  other  hand  the  principle  of  sacrifice  is  in- 
voked in  order  to  secure  alleviation  of  this  situation;  but 
the  sacrifice  is  the  highest  conceivable,  consisting  in  the 
suffering  and  temporary  defeat  of  the  Divine  itself,  in 
the  scheme  of  salvation;  and  even  under  the  operation 
of  this  sacrifice  there  remains,  as  in  all  epic,  the  tragic 
destruction  of  the  beaten  cause  and  its  adherents  in  hell. 
These  ideas  are  set  forth  in  poetry  in  two  great  examples. 
In  Milton  the  fable  is  fully  constructed;  on  the  side  of 
the  history  of  the  human  will  it  is  fully  developed  in 
"Paradise  Lost,"  and  on  the  side  of  the  Divine  will  par- 
tially developed  in  the  "Paradise  Regained."  In  Dante's 
"Divine  Comedy,"  though  the  matter  is  not  there  pre- 
sented in  the  form  of  action  but  in  a  symbolical  picture 
of  the  results  in  the  after  world  of  Hell,  Purgatory  and 
Paradise,  the  substance  of  the  situation  is  the  same;  here 
is  the  fifth  act  of  the  spiritual  tragedy  in  which  the 
moment  of  repose  must  come,  and  it  is  found  in  two  forms, 
the  death  of  the  wicked,  which  is  a  tragic  issue  without 
relief,  and  the  salvation  of  the  blessed,  which  is  the 
victory  of  the  higher  will  through  sacrifice,  manifested  in 
the  direction  of  longer  and  fuller  life,  —  a  strictly  epic 
issue.  It  is  plainly  only  a  tempered  optimism  that  the 
epic  permits  to  the  reflective  man. 

Such  are  some  of  the  directions  in  which  the  mind 
makes  out,  if  it  would  grasp  the  profounder  significance 
of  epical  poetry;  it  may  rest  in  the  pleasure  of  contem- 
plating the  march  of  great  events,  the  display  of  great 
character  in  action,  the  play  of  individual  adventure  and 
the  many  forms  of  imaginative  delight  that  the  epic 
utilizes  to  enrich  and  relieve  its  graver  matter,  but  the 
greater  the  mental  power  of  the  reader  the  more  he  will 
endeavor  to  comprehend  the  profounder  contents  of  the 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  53 

epic  in  its  meditation  on  human  fate,  on  the  operation  of 
the  will,  not  in  individuals  merely  but  in  society,  or  the 
view  of  history  which  it  inculcates.  History,  indeed,  holds 
the  same  relation  to  it  that  biography  does  to  lyrical  verse. 
The  reader  of  the  lyric  comes  to  love  the  author,  to  desire 
to  know  his  life  and  to  become,  in  a  sense,  his  comrade, 
because  he  feels  that  the  poems  are,  after  all,  only  frag- 
ments of  the  man  and  that  they,  or  the  spirit  they  ex- 
press, are  integrated  in  the  poet's  own  nature,  the  poet's 
soul.  In  the  heart  of  the  poet  he  finds  at  last  the  song. 
In  a  like  way  life  on  the  large  social  scale,  history,  lies 
back  of  epical  verse,  but  not  history  in  any  narrow  sense 
of  politics,  institutions,  manners;  it  is  life  as  it  has  been 
broadly  lived  in  the  past,  inclusive  of  all  that  entered  into 
it,  Greek  life,  Roman  life,  the  life  of  the  Renaissance,  that 
must  be  more  fully  resuscitated  in  the  mind  before  the 
epics  give  up  their  treasure.  Such  study  belongs  to  the 
enthusiast,  perhaps,  to  the  reader  who  finds  in  literature 
the  greater  part  of  his  mental  life;  in  general  he  must 
content  himself  with  something  far  short  of  this,  and  be 
confined  to  the  immediate  pleasure  of  the  obvious  part 
of  the  poem,  its  events,  characters,  and  situations.  Epic 
poetry  is  rich  in  such  pleasure  because  it  is  seldom  at- 
tempted except  by  great  masters  of  the  poetic  art  who  are 
accustomed  to  give  such  high  finish  to  their  work  as 
lesser  men  can  afford  only  to  short  attempts.  Virgil, 
Tennyson  and  Milton  exhausted  art  in  giving  beauty  to 
every  line  and  phrase,  to  every  incident,  episode,  picture 
by  itself.  The  surface  of  their  poetry  is  perfect  and 
brilliant  as  with  a  mosaic  incrustation  of  color,  scene,  and 
divine  glow  of  art  like  that  of  the  builders  of  Italy.  In 
the  contemplation  of  this  resides  the  pure  poetic  pleasure 
undisturbed  by  philosophy  and  unshadowed  by  remoter 


54  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

thought.  It  is  thus  that  the  epics  should  be  first  known 
and  appropriated  by  their  direct  objective  beauty  in  de- 
tail, as  a  vision  of  human  experience  in  the  large;  the 
rest  will  come  later,  if  at  all,  and  unless  the  philosophic 
interest  is  roused  in  the  reader  so  as  to  become  a  com- 
manding need,  it  may  be  spared,  for  above  all  things 
poetic  appreciation  should  have  spontaneity. 

Other  forms  of  narrative  poetry  are  best  read  in  the 
same  way  with  a  preliminary  attention  to  beauty  of  de- 
tail, to  simple  scenes  and  passages  that  of  themselves 
attract  and  hold  the  reader.  The  poetic  value  of  the 
"Georgics''  or  of  Lucretius  is  thus  most  readily  found,  and 
the  way  opened  to  the  appreciation  of  the  poems  in  their 
entirety.  Into  the  perception  of  the  wholeness  of  a  great 
poem,  even  of  moderate  length,  so  many  elements  enter, 
and  for  the  most  part  the  habit  of  the  mind  in  artistic 
appreciation  is  so  imperfect  and  unfamiliar,  that  it  is  not 
to  be  expected  that  the  reader  should  arrive  at  facility 
in  such  understanding  except  slowly  and  by  much  prac- 
tice. The  idyl,  of  which  the  great  English  masters  are 
Milton  and  Tennyson,  perhaps  best  trains  the  mind  in 
the  appreciation  of  beauty  in  detail  and  the  understanding 
of  that  glowing  surface  of  color  and  picture  which  is  the 
poetic  method  of  the  greatest  masters,  those  who  have 
had  most  patience  with  their  art.  These  exquisite  scenes 
of  the  idyls,  each  wrought  out  with  the  fineness  of  a 
cameo  and  linked  one  with  another  so  subtly  that  the 
passing  of  the  eye  from  one  to  the  next  is  hardly  marked, 
are  triumphs  of  expression;  if  the  reader  has  the  sense  of 
beauty,  they  educate  it  with  great  rapidity,  and  they  ac- 
custom him  to  that  slow  reading  which  is  necessary  in 
poetry  in  order  to  give  time  for  the  contemplation  of  the 
scene  to  have  its  effect  on  the  mind.    Tennyson's  idyls 


NARRATIVE   POETRY  55 

were  the  principal  education  of  his  generation  in  the 
sense  of  beauty  in  life,  and  the  vogue  of  his  method  and 
melody  through  the  English  world  indicates  the  lack, 
almost  the  void,  that  it  supplied,  though  Landor  and 
Keats  were  before  him  and  Milton  survived  as  the  best 
English  master  of  the  method.  It  is  essentially  the  classic 
method,  the  Greek  tradition.  The  reader  once  brought 
to  true  delight  in  the  idyl  finds  the  way  to  pastoral  poetry 
open  and  soon  adapts  himself  to  the  conventions  of  that 
world,  so  remote  from  actuality,  where  the  dream  of  life 
as  it  might  be  fills  the  scene  and  human  experience  is 
freed  from  its  discordant  elements  and  poetry  becomes 
more  like  picture  and  statue  and  music  than  in  any  other 
part  of  its  domain.  This  Arcadian  world,  which  is  the 
most  insubstantial  part  of  poetry  to  the  English  reader, 
is  by  its  spirit  rather  a  division  of  lyrical  than  of  narra- 
tive poetry;  but  it  presents  a  vision  of  life  and  is  descrip- 
tive of  a  realm  of  imagination,  and  it  is  characteristically 
a  telling  of  life,  though  by  a  singing  voice,  as  in  Theoc- 
ritus, Virgil  and  the  Italians.  Pastoral  poetry  is  a  highly 
refined  form  of  the  art,  and  the  taste  for  it  indicates  that 
the  education  of  the  reader  approaches  completion  in  so 
far  as  his  induction  into  its  forms  is  concerned.  But  the 
nature  of  narrative  poetry  in  its  various  phases  has  been 
sufficiently  opened;  in  general,  as  lyrical  poetry  develops 
personality  through  emotion,  narrative  verse  displays  the 
various  scene  of  the  world,  society  in  action,  the  breadth 
of  experience,  and  develops  social  power,  knowledge  and 
a  many-sided  touch  with  life.  It  is  the  vision  of  life,  and 
presents  experience  extensively  rather  than  intensively, 
with  objective  reality;  it  provokes  thought  and  initiates 
the  individual  into  the  world  life  of  man  both  historically 
and  ideally. 


CHAPTER  IV 

DRAMATIC  POETRY 

The  drama  has  many  claims  to  be  regarded  as  the 
highest  form  of  literary  art.  It  deals  with  the  material 
/of  human  experience  immediately,  giving  bodily  form  to 
/  life;  even  all  that  is  invisible,  belonging  in  the  unseen 
world  of  inward  experience,  and  all  that  is  ineffable  in 
passion,  is  presented  at  least  as  plainly  as  in  the  life  itself 
by  the  intervention  of  speech,  gesture  and  the  visible 
presence  of  the  event.  The  form  of  art,  too,  employed 
by  the  drama  is  highly  organic;  reason  enters  into  it  with 
stern  insistence,  and  intellectualizes  the  life  set  forth,  re- 
lating one  part  to  another  with  a  rational  end  in  vieWj, 
r  /  Dramatic  theory  may  be  best  illustrated  by  the  example 
of  tragedy.  The^ssence  of  tragedy  is  a  collision  in  the 
sphere  of  the  will  ;^  the  will  strives  to  realize  itself  in^ 
action,  and  in  the  attempt  collides  with  some  obstacle. 
TEe~acti6irthus  entered  upon  is  fatally  controlled,  both 
as  to  its  occasion  and  Issue;  nTno  part  of  literary  art  is 
the  rule  laid  down  so  rigorously  as  here  that  the  action 
shall  be  made  up  of  a  chair^^f  events  linked  together  by 
causal  necessity.  \  To  uncover  this  chain  and  show  its 
connection  is  the  province  of  the  reason.  Every  ex- 
traneous and  unrelated  element  is  cut  away;  all  is  simpli- 
fied to  the  point  that  the  spectator  must  be  convinced  that 
the  result  obtained  in  the  issue  was  inevitable  and  could 
not  possibly  have  been  otherwise  than  it  was.    The  power 

s6 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  57 

which  is  invoked  is  fate;  it  is  a  power  that  clings  to, 
weighs  upon  and  drags  down  its  prey,  be  he  never  so 
strong  and  noble;  it  is  a  manifestation  of  the  unsearchable 
law  of  human  destiny.  This  is  tragedy  as  it  was  first 
conceived  and  practiced  by  the  Greek  genius,  and  it  re- 
mains unchanged  in  its  essential  conception.  The  dis- 
cords that  arise  in  life  are  infinite  in  variety,  and  the 
kinds  of  tragic  conflict  as  various  as  the  combinations  of 
the  will  with  life.  The  simplest  collision  is  with  external 
circumstance;  the  most  complex  is  that  when  the  will 
islhternaily  divideJ^against  itself  by  some  fact  of  char- 
acter;  and  the  two  forms  may  be  combined  in  the  same 
pTay.  The  working  of  fate  in  the  play  may  be  attended 
with  all  degrees  of  interpretation  from  clearness  to  mys- 
tery; it  is  most  clear  when  it  is  ethical,  it  is  most  mys- 
terious when  it  transcends  any  scheme  of  justice  known 
to  men.  \  Fate  into  which  a  retributory  element  enters, 
pursuing  a  sin-stricken  house  like  that  of  Atreus,  is  in- 
telligible to  the  conscience;  but  tragedy  is  not  restrained 
within  these  limits  in  art  any  more  than  in  life,  and  fate 
in  proportion  as  it  sinks  into  facts  of  circumstance,  such 
as  heredity,  and  blends  with  a  generous  nature  such  as 
Hamlet  or  Othello,  becomes  mysterious,  a  part  of  the 
unsolved  spectacle  of  life.  In  its  progress  as  an  art 
tragedy  seems  to  leave  ethics  behind  and  to  become  in- 
soluble. 

The  Greek  drama  is  the  best  introduction  to  the  study 
of  tragedy.  It  presents  several  points  of  advantage  in 
inducting  the  reader  into  the  nature  of  what  is  attempted, 
the  point  of  view,  the  modes  of  evolving  the  action,  the 
resources  of  the  theatrical  representation.  In  the  first 
place,  it  is  extraordinarily  simple  in  its  statement  of  the- 
tragic  problem^  using  plain  elements  in  the  tale,  few  char- 


S8  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

acters  and  well  defined  situations.    The  simplicity  of 
Greek  tragedies,  indeed,  strikes  the  modern  reader  as 
paucity;  the  action,  the  thought,  the  mental  and  moral 
substance  of  the  play  are  almost  skeletonized  in  their 
obviousness;   and  for  the  esthetic  effect,  it  is  evident, 
reliance  was  largely  placed  on  the  presentation  with  its 
open-air  atmosphere,  its  sculpturesque  grouping  and  its 
choral  accompaniments.    In  the  seQpnd^pIace,  the  pre- 
possession of  the  play  with  ethics  is  marked.    The  Greek 
genius  undertook  by  a  natural  inclination  to  impose  an 
ethical  meaning  on  life  as  known  in  the  legend  of  the 
race;  it  would  find  moral  harmony  in  the  dealings  of  the 
divine  with  mankind,  and  beginning  with  ^Eschylus  it 
exalted  the  conception  of  righteousness  as  an  element  in 
fatality,  and  ending  with  Euripides  it  was  still  concerned 
with  the  moral  aspect  of  human  affairs.    Aristotle  reduced 
the  practice  of  the  dramatists  to  a  theory,  and  simply 
excluded  from  the  art  all  such  representation  as  could  not 
be  rationalized  for  the  conscience,  on  the  ground  that 
such  representations  would  be  impiety  to  the  gods.    The 
ethical  school  of  criticism  of  the  drama  still  rests  sub- 
stantially on  these  prepossessions,  inherited  from  the 
Greeks,  which  presumed  a  law  of  righteousness  manifest 
in  the  tragedies  that  befall  mankind.    The  j:}reek  drama 
is  also  convenient  for  study  because  it  exemplifies  with 
great  lucidity  andTpeedln'^evelopment  the  evolution  of 
the  art,  not  only  in  its  emergence  from  its  early  state  as 
a  choral  act  of  religion  into  a  more  theatrical  represen- 
tation of  individuals  and  their  relations,  but  also  in  its 
movement  from  a  rough  and  broad  typical  treatment,  as 
in  JEschylus,  through  the  perfect  balance  of  Sophocles  to 
the   extreme   individualization   of   Euripides;    in    these 
dramatists  the  normal  evolution  of  every  fine  art  is  illus- 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  59 

trated  by  the  example  of  tragedy  passing  from  a  lofty  and 
abstract  idealism  to  the  various  forms  of  realism  and 
romanticism.  Besides  these  three  marked  traits  of  sim- 
plicity, ethjcaL^quality,  and  artistic_developmentj  the  '  ^ 
Greek  drama  is  also  distingmsEedTby  great  interest  in- 
herent in  itself.  The  subjects  were  narrowly  limited  by 
tradition  to  the  group  of  legends  and  tales  that  contained 
the  religious  and  historic  imagination  of  the  race  already 
embodied  in  great  events  and  surpassing  characters;  the 
action  is  consequently  always  one  that  has  distinction  in 
itself,  and  the  playing  of  the  dramatist's  thought  about 
the  action  was  the  point  of  novelty  in  each  new  represen- 
tation; the  drama  is  thus  a  great  text  freshly  commented 
upon  and  interpreted  by  the  contemporary  spirit  of 
Greece  in  the  person  of  her  best  masters  of  poetic  genius. 
It  is  true  that  the  external  part  of  life,  the  action,  holds 
the  first  place  in  interest,  and  this  is  a  part  of  the  native 
simplicity  of  Greek  drama;  it  is  primarily  events  that 
are  to  be  set  forth;  the  purpose  of  the  poet  is  to  draw 
forth  their  law  as  intelligible  to  the  conscience.  The 
character  interest  is  different  from  that  of  modern 
tragedy,  and  seldom  admits  of  that  special  trait  of  in- 
ternal development  which  belongs  predominantly  to  later 
art.  But  the  characters,  though  fixed,  are  equal  to  the 
events  in  which  their  fortunes  are  engaged,  worthy  of 
them,  and  surpassing  in  human  interest.  Their  mere 
names  have  served  for  ages  as  types  both  of  human  na- 
ture and  of  tragic  destiny.  Agamemnon  and  Clytem- 
nestra,  Antigone,  Orestes,  Medea,  Hippolytus,  and  a  score 
of  others  make  a  list  that,  if  Shakespeare  be  excepted, 
no  other  literature  is  able  to  approach  in  definite  and 
powerful  impressiveness;  they  are  for  the  imagination 
what  Plutarch's  men  are  for  history,  a  gallery  without  a 


^ 


6o  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

rival.  It  is  also  true  that  Greek  tragedy,  if  it  be  thor- 
oughly read,  presents  a  greater  variety  of  interest  for 
romantic  pleasure  as  well  as  for  intellectual  activity  than 
is  commonly  thought;  its  poetic  riches,  as  Milton  well 
knew,  are  untold;  there  is,  indeed,  no  single  body  of 
literature  comparable  to  it  even  when  read,  as  there  was 
never  its  equal  for  blended  esthetic  pleasures  when  acted 
under  the  pure  skies  of  Athens. 

For  the  English  reader,  nevertheless,  the  natural  way  to 
appreciate  dramatic  poetry  is  to  read  Shakespeare.  He 
is  one  of  those  authors  so  greatly  assimilative,  so  like  to 
life  itself,  that  no  preparation  is  needed  to  read  him  be- 
yond mere  living  from  the  time  that  boyhood  awakes  to 
life.  It  is  always  wise  to  approach  literature  by  reading 
one  author  much  rather  than  many  authors  a  little;  and 
to  read  Shakespeare  thoroughly  so  shapes  and  informs 
the  mind  that  no  part  of  imaginative  literature  will  there- 
after be  dark  to  it.  If  it  be  impossible  to  assign  him  such 
a  place  in  English  education  as  Homer  filled  in  Greece, 
his  works  are  nevertheless  a  sort  of  secular  Bible  for 
English-speaking  peoples,  and  express  the  English  ap- 
prehension of  life  in  the  large  both  in  the  way  of  ideal 
types  of  character,  of  romantic  or  profound  courses  of 
events  and  of  practical  wisdom  formulated  in  pregnant 
phrase.  To  know  Shakespeare  well  is  to  have  sufficient 
depth  in  literary  education  though  not  sufficient  range, 
since  he  was  of  his  age  as  well  as  for  all  time.  Such  an 
education  requires  to  be  supplemented;  yet  in  the  English 
drama  it  is  well-nigh  exhaustive.  At  the  first  glance  it 
is  apparent  that  with  Shakespeare  the  Greek  drama  has 
been  left  far  behind.  It  is  not  characteristic  of  Shakes- 
peare to  be  either  simple  or  ethical.  He  had,  back  of  his 
dramas,  for  subject-matter  English  and  Roman  history 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  6i 

and  the  romance  tales  of  the  continent;  this  body  of 
tradition  was  not  comparable  to  Greek  legend  in  having 
been  subjected  to  the  rationalizing  power  of  the  imagina- 
tion through  long  time,  and  it  consequently  was  more 
miscellaneous,  inchoate  and  undigested,  mixed  of  hetero- 
geneous and  incompatible  elements,  less  pure  as  material 
for  the  creative  reason  that  genius  exercises.  Shakes- 
peare, too,  was  himself  less  penetrated  with  the  Greek  in- 
stinct for  ethical  order,  for  harmony,  in  life;  he  was  of  a 
northern  stock,  and  what  to  a  Greek  would  have  seemed 
barbaric  habits  of  mind  were  still  implicit  in  his  nature, 
in  his  thought  and  feehng.  The  world,  besides,  had  long 
broken  old  molds  of  ethical  theory,  and  in  expanding  had 
included  new  experience  of  manifold  variety.  Life  as  it 
came  to  Shakespeare's  knowledge  was  a  greater  and 
subtler  thing  than  it  had  been  in  antiquity;  it  was  full  of 
new  and  unmeasured  elements;  it  did  not  suggest  har- 
mony, it  did  not  enforce  on  the  mind  any  ethical  law 
controlling  its  phenomena,  it  offered  rather  at  the  best  an 
opportunity  for  moral  exploration  and  mental  experiment. 
These  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  Shakespeare's  plays 
cannot  be  described  as  ethical  in  the  old  and  severe  sense; 
they  display  ethical  meaning  only  partially  and  often  ig- 
nore that  side  of  life;  they  are  supremely  concerned  only 
with  the  representation  of  life,  however  confused  and  mys- 
terious a  phase  it  may  wear  to  the  moral  judgment. 
)/^rhe  reader  must  therefore  be  prepared  to  abandon  that 
strict  idea  of  tragedy  as  the  rationalization  of  life  under 
an  ethical  conception,  and  often  to  accept  it  here  as  the 
spectacle  of  mere  fate,  the  law  of  human  destiny  manifest 
in  examples,  but  seen  rather  than  understood.  The  laxer 
hold  of  any  informing  rational  principle  in  the  play,  this 
free  movement  of  life  in  it,  this  grasp  of  the  problem 


62  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

without  eliminating  insoluble  elements  belongs  to  Shakes- 
peare, and  is  a  part  of  the  breadth  and  comprehensive- 
ness of  his  method.  It  is  because  of  this,  together  with 
other  cognate  qualities,  that  critics  often  speak  of  his 
genius  as  being  half-barbaric.  He  includes ,jiiiich  more 
than  art  woulrl  inrlndp.,  nr^^  ^'^  hf  r^T^^I^^  ^^  attPnH  to  the 
necessities  of  art^e  created  with  his_whole_power  of  man 
rf^fhf^than  hy'aijy^gpecial  faculty^  in  a-pieremeal  way, 
and  hence  his  ^rkli^parts Jr-om  art  -but  it  always  de- 
parts inlhe  direction  of  iQgre  life.  To  familiarize  the 
mind  with  hTshabits,  it  is  best  to  follow  him  in  his  growth 
from  play  to  play,  and  so  to  grow  with  him  into  his  prac- 
tice, moods,  and  changes  of  interest,  style  and  medita- 
tion; it  is  a  richly  developing  life  that  will  be  so  led.  The 
histories,  even  those  in  which  his  hand  is  doubtful  or 
partial,  have  the  good  of  introducing  one  to  the  Eliza- 
bethan theater  and  accustoming  the  reader  to  its  con- 
ventions, its  kinds  of  interest,  its  atmosphere;  and  with 
"Richard  II,"  '^Richard  III,"  "Henry  V,"  "King  John," 
Shakespeare  already  begins  to  be  greatly  known;  the 
other  plays  follow  in  their  order,  the  romantic  comedies, 
the  tragedies  and  Roman  plays,  the  romances,  as  they 
were  chronologically  written;  and  as  each  one  is  mas- 
tered and  understood,  so  far  as  the  reader  at  the  time  can 
appropriate  it,  the  nature  of  Shakespeare's  art  and  the 
power  of  his  genius  will  open,  and  the  wide  meaning  of 
the  plays,  which  are  a  blended  product  of  both  art  and 
genius,  will  be  more  fully  comprehended.  One  should 
read  the  plays,  and  not  indulge  too  fondly  in  the  comment. 
If  one  is  led  on  to  further  study  and  meditation,  the  Vari- 
orum edition  of  Furness  offers  every  needed  facility  and 
is  library  enough;  with  Shakespeare,  never  forget,  "the 
play's  the  thing."    The  question  of  periods,  the  Eliza- 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  63 

bethan  vocabulary,  stage  history,  may  take  care  of  them- 
selves for  the  time  being;  so  may  the  sources  of  the  plots 
and  analysis  of  the  characters;  so  may  the  symbolical 
interpretation  of  both;  life  is  not  long  enough  to  read 
Shakespeare  in  that  way,  if  one  has  other  business;  but 
a  man,  even  much  occupied  with  many  affairs,  may  read 
all  Shakespeare's  plays  thoroughly  and  intelligently  with 
true  appreciation,  and  acquire  an  excellent  literary  edu- 
cation thereby. 

Shakespeare  suffices  singly  so  much  more  than  other 
authors  because  he  includes  within  the  work  of  one  per- 
sonality so  extraordinary  a  range  of  dramatic  art.  The 
Greek  drama  in  comparison  with  the  Shakespearian  is  as 
the  beautiful  but  confined  Mediterranean  world  to  the 
world  of  the  world  navigators.  He  adds  to  tragedy  the 
province  of  comedy,  but  the  expansion  of  the  field  is  much 
more  than  that;  he  so  treats  the  story  that  is  the  nucleus 
of  the  play  as  to  make  it  a  theme  of  life  as  various  as  it 
is  universal.  He  presents  many  kinds  of  life,  environ- 
ments, atmospheres,  without  ceasing  to  be  great  in  the 
treatment  of  them;  in  reading  him  one  is  not  confined  to 
history  or  tragedy  or  comedy  or  pastoral  or  any  mode  of 
life  or  art,  but  may  pass  from  one  to  the  other  and  still 
remain  under  the  sway  of  one  power;  in  other  words,  life 
here  retains  its  individuality,  its  being  one  life,  without 
losing  its  diversity  of  scene,  business,  and  function.  Hu- 
manity is,  in  a  sense,  harmonized  by  being  thus  held 
within  the  limits  of  his  temperament.  In  no  dramatist 
is  there  so  large  a  geography  of  the  world  of  the  mind. 
It  is  true  that  his  Athens  is  not  the  city  of  Theseus  nor 
his  Rome  the  city  of  Coriolanus  or  of  Caesar,  nor  England 
the  England  of  Lear  nor  Scotland  the  Scotland  of  Mac- 
beth; yet  each  is  in  turn  really  Athenian,  Roman,  British, 


64  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

and  Scotch,  and  gives  a  true  illusion  of  historic  phases  of 
life  each  at  one  with  itself;  and,  besides,  there  are  the 
fairy   world,   the   witches,   the   dream   world   of   "The 
Tempest,"  the  world  of  Arden,  of  Venice  and  Verona, 
each  yielding  a  true  illusion  of  imaginative  phases  of  life 
similarly  at  harmony  within  its  own  domain.     The  ex- 
pansion given  to  life  by  the  revelation  of  each  new  play 
comes  with  the  effect  of  mental  and  imaginative  dis- 
covery; it  is  an  invigorating  shock  and  adds  new  horizons 
to  the  reader's  consciousness  of  life.    If  it  is  a  chief  end 
of  literary  study  to  reveal  new  interests  in  life,  to  mul- 
tiply the  points  of  contact  between  the  mind  and  human 
experience,  to  open  out  new  ways  of  thought  and  feeling, 
Shakespeare  serves  this  end  with  a  stimulation,  an  abun- 
dance and  surprise,  and  with  a  perfection  in  surrendering 
the  new  world  into  the  hands  and  comprehension  of  the 
V,reader,  entirely  beyond  comparison  with  others.     It  is, 
however,  not  so  much  by  the  extent,  variety  and  freshness 
of  the  worlds  of  life  which  he  evokes  that  he  informs  and 
shapes  the  mind  and  gives  it  great  horizons,  as  it  is  by 
the  free  play  of  life  in  its  element  which  he  uncovers  in 
the  action  and  the  characters,  whether  it  be  tragic  or 
mirthful,  in  the  lofty  or  the  low  persons  of  the  drama, 
flushed  with  passion,  crossed  with  melancholy  or  salt  with 
cynicism,  —  whatever  it  be,  it  is  life  in  its  own  element 
and  unconfined.    Fate  rules  in  it,  and  most  plainly  in  the 
greatest  dramatic  moments,  but  it  is  Shakespeare's  fate, 
the  unsearchable  law  of  human  destiny  that  escapes  moral 
statement  and  is  more  largely  if  more  blindly  conceived 
than  in  old  days.     In  ''Lear"  and  its  attendant  great 
tragedies,  pity  and  terror,  the  tragic  motives,  are  at  their 
height  partly  because  of  the  paralysis  of  the  reason  in 
view  of  the  spectacle;  the  moral  order  has  vanished  and 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  65 

gone  forever,  and  no  power  of  art  can  bring  it  back  by 
skill  in  the  solution  of  the  action.  Fate  such  as  this 
makes  the  greatness  of  the  passionate  plays,  and  in  lesser 
forms  it  is  present  in  all  as  the  spirit  abiding  in  life  that 
has  its  will  in  the  end,  the  genius  of  the  play.  Shakes- 
peare never  loses  touch  with  this  mystic  element  in  life, 
and  he  is  fond  of  putting  it  forth  as  an  enchantment, 
especially  in  the  happier  phases  of  his  art;  the  ways  in 
which  life  escapes  understanding  are  in  no  author  so  large 
a  par/  of  the  substance,  the  charm,  one  may  almost  say 
the  meaning.  It  is  thus  that  his  art  transcends  Greek  art, 
and  incarnates  the  modern  spirit.  Though  his  art  would 
be  described  by  its  traits  as  belonging  to  the  Renaissance, 
the  modern  spirit  was  born  there  like  Athene  from  the 
head  of  Zeus.  No  other  author  gives  forth  that  spirit 
with  like  power  and  light,  illuminating  the  self-conscious- 
ness of  humanity,  its  realization  of  human  nature  and 
human  life.  To  read  Shakespeare  is  not,  as  is  sometimes 
said,  to  feudalize  the  imagination  and  befool  the  mind 
with  aristocratic  and  dead  ideals;  but  to  be  myriad- 
minded,  like  Shakespeare,  is  to  be  modern-minded,  ever 
to  comprehend  and  interpret  more  of  life  with  an  increas- 
ing sense  of  its  insoluble  elements,  to  live  in  a  world  of 
new  discovery,  of  information,  of  revelation  with  sus- 
pense of  judgment,  to  become  more  tolerant,  more  hu- 
mane, with  a  serener  view  of  the  blended  terror  and 
enchantment  of  the  scene,  the  golden  days  and  doubtful 
fates  of  life,  nowhere  so  romantically,  passionately  and 
wisely  bodied  forth  as  on  Shakespeare's  page.  The  way 
to  read  Shakespeare  is  to  take  the  dramas  which  most 
attract  and  interest  the  reader  and  become  thoroughly 
familiar  with  those,  neglecting  the  others  until  their  time 
shall  come. 


66  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

All  other  drama  pales  beside  Shakespeare's.    The  re- 
vival of  the  Elizabethan  drama  that  was  an  element  in 
the  romantic  movement  of  the  last  century  in  England 
brought  back  into  view  the  entire  stage  of  that  era  and 
also  its  historic  forerunners  in  English  dramatic  life.    The 
pre-Shakespearians,  nevertheless,  have  little  intrinsic  in- 
terest except  of  an  historical  kind;  they  live,  even  his 
great  contemporaries  live,  largely  by  the  reflected  light 
of  Shakespeare  in  the  penumbra  of  his  fame.    Each  has 
qualities  of  distinction,  vigor,  grace,  charm,  wit,  pictur- 
esqueness,  intellectual  power,  dramatic  skill;  some  have 
one,  some  another  of  these  traits;  but  in  no  one  of  them 
is  the  combination  so  happy  or  the  work  so  excellent  as 
to  give  their  plays  the  quality  that  makes  literature  en- 
duringly  powerful  as  an  expression  of  life  in  the  ideal. 
Marlowe  alone  of  the  predecessors  and  Jonson  alone  of 
the  contemporaries  arouse  other  than  a  scholar's  interest; 
such  writers  as  Greene  and  Peele  and  Lodge  are  negli- 
gible; and  the  whole  mass  of  moralities  and  miracle  plays, 
though  historically  valuable,  and  often   touched  by  a 
happy  strain  of  human  truth  or  picturesqueness,  is  as 
literature  a  thing  of  naught.     The  post-Shakespearians 
have  greater  literary  skill,  but  they  had  lost  in  the  whole- 
ness of  their  grasp  on  life  and  present  the  traits  of  a 
decadence,  even  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  and  more 
markedly  in  Webster  and  Ford.    It  is  possible  to  become 
greatly  interested  in  some  one  or  other  of  the  more  famous 
plays,  even  to  reach  a  degree  of  enthusiasm,  but  these  are 
special  experiences  of  the  reader  and  depend  much  on 
temperament  and  accident.    In  general,  Lamb's  "Speci- 
mens" and  what  he  said  of  them  are  sufficient  to  satisfy 
curiosity  or  open  the  way  to  experiment,  and  Lowell's 
lectures  on  these  dramatists  give  all  needful  information 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  67 

and  show  at  the  same  time  a  diminishing  interest  in  the 
writers  which  is  the  sign  of  a  wise  literary  choice.  The 
later  history  of  English  drama  is  comparatively  barren 
ground.  The  Restoration  drama  is  essentially  prosaic 
and  an  expression  of  English  genius  the  least  admirable 
either  for  sound  taste  or  fine  feeling  in  English  literary 
annals;  it  is  only  for  the  curious.  The  prose  comedy  of 
Congreve,  and  later  of  Goldsmith  and  Sheridan,  is  the 
best  in  the  language,  and  should  be  read,  as  novels  or 
essays  are  read,  upon  a  lower  level  of  interest  than 
dramatic  poetry.  The  choral  dramas  of  Milton  and 
Shelley  open  a  new  source  and  outflow  of  English  genius 
in  its  noblest  forms,  but  they  are  rather  lyrical  than 
dramatic.  The  nineteenth  century  produced  no  great 
drama  in  English,  though  occasionally,  as  in  "Manfred," 
it  gave  forth  a  work  of  dramatic  intensity,  or  as  in  some 
of  Browning's  poems  it  produced  drama  in  a  fragmentary 
form  of  romance  and  passion.  On  great  lines,  and  for 
the  reader  who  is  not  limited  to  dramatic  interests,  it 
remains  true  that  Shakespeare,  supplemented  by  a  play 
here  and  there,  suffices  for  dramatic  reading,  and  after 
him  Milton  and  Shelley,  in  their  choral  dramas,  are  the 
great  masters  in  English  of  the  truth  that  drama  can  put 
forth  by  poetic  imagination. 

The  approach  to  foreign  drama,  except  the  Greek,  is 
best  made  by  the  way  of  comedy,  especially  by  Moliere 
and  Goldoni.  Foreign  tragedy,  whether  French,  German, 
or  Italian,  is  very  remote  from  the  reader.  Spanish  drama, 
a  form  intrinsically  as  interesting  in  many  ways  as  the 
Greek  and  the  Shakespearian  and  making  with  them  a 
third  definite  form  of  this  art  in  its  supreme  practice,  is 
still  more  remote  from  the  English  reader  and  requires 
for  its  appreciation  great  cultural  preparation  and  much 


68  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

plasticity  in  the  literary  habits  of  the  mind.  Such  read- 
iftg--a.§Calderon  or  the  classic  French  drama  or  even 
Goethean^hSdiiller  is  for  scholars.  Foreign  drama  may 
now  be  more  profitably  approached  by  the  contemporary 
forms,  Scandinavian,  German,  French  and  Italian,  than 
by  its  older  historic  examples.  These  plays  are  filled  with 
a  modern  spirit  that  is  becoming  more  and  more  cosmo- 
politan and  pervasive,  even  among  English-speaking 
people;  the  substance  of  them  is  not  narrowly  national, 
but  universal  in  interest  and  in  presentation;  and  the 
needful  critical  aids  to  assist  the  reader  are  plentiful  and 
accessible. 

The  drama,  as  an  artistic  form,  is  of  course  much  more 
complex  than  has  been  indicated;  other  things  besides 
literature  enter  into  it  in  its  theatrical  representation,  and 
the  appreciation  of  it  as  a  spectacle  involves  other  prepa- 
ration and  rests  on  other  principles  in  addition  to  what 
belongs  to  it  as  literature.  How  great  a  part  the  scenic 
and  choral  arrangement  played  in  the  Greek  drama  has 
been  already  pointed  out,  and  in  the  modern  drama  the 
importance  of  the  theatrical  elements  is  often  such  that 
as  an  art  of  the  stage  the  play  need  not  be  literature  at 
all.  The  scant  resources  of  the  Elizabethan  stage  threw 
a  heavier  burden  on  the  literature  of  the  text  and  brought 
the  purely  mental  reproduction  of  life  to  the  fore;  and 
the  power  of  Shakespeare  as  a  writer  is  due  to  the  genius 
he  had  for  this  mental  representation  of  life  without  much 
aid  from  material  conditions.  It  follows  from  this  that 
his  drama  when  read  merely  and  not  enacted  yields  a 
vision  and  a  realization  of  life  beyond  that  of  theatrical 
writers  or  playwrights  generally,  so  vivid  and  intense  as 
to  set  the  plays  apart,  not  as  closet  dramas  so-called  to 
be  read  in  the  study,  but  as  literature  which  gives  up  its 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  69 

full  contents  to  the  eye  of  the  mind  unaided  by  the  scene. 
Many,  indeed,  believe,  as  Lamb  did,  that  such  private 
reading  is  more  satisfactory  than  any  public  represen- 
tation, inasmuch  as  the  presentation  on  the  stage  falls 
short  of  the  scene  and  also  of  the  actors  that  the  imagi- 
nation of  the  reader  supplies.  The  stage  craft  of  Shakes- 
peare was  of  great  assistance  to  him  in  casting  the  action,  ^ 
in  handling  its  development  and  in  suggesting  modes  of  \ 
arrangement  and  display;  but  his  poetic  genius,  achieving  1 
a  vivid  representation  of  life  by  purely  mental  means,  | 
made  the  plays  great  literature.  The  function  of  dramatic 
poetry,  in  comparison  with  epic  poetry  which  presents 
life  socially  and  by  a  method  of  extension,  is  to  set  life 
forth  individually  and  by  a  method  of  intension;  the 
drama  is  an  intensive  rendering  of  life  by  individual  ex- 
amples of  human  fortune  which  compress  the  truth  of 
life  into  a  brief  abstract.  Poetic  dramatic  genius  by  its 
powers  of  ideality  condenses  such  general  truth  —  the 
law  of  life  —  whether  in  action  or  character,  and  the 
greater  the  condensation  the  more  brilliant  and  intense 
is  the  effect.  Drarnatic  poetry  inYplves^ the,  presentation 
qflife  in  its  supreme  moments,  ita^urpassing_characters 
and  its  greatest  problems,  because  it  is  in  these  that  the 
intensity  it  seeks  resides  and  the  truth  it  would  express 
is  most  vividly  condensed./  In  tragedy,  especially,  the'^X 
most  obstinate  evil,  the  most  mysterious  dispensations, 
the  darkest  moral  problems,  are  set  forth;  what  life  con- 
tains of  pessimism  and  ignorance  is  here  heaped  up;  the 
theme  indeed  is  often  such  an  outbreak  of  passion,  such 
crime  or  sacrilege,  such  violation  as  is  seldom  treated 
except  in  tragedy,  and  dramatic  poetry  has  a  certain 
peculiar  power  to  treat  such  tales  and  characters  as 
phenomena  of  life  and  passion  still  within  the  pale  of 


70  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

understanding,  and  even  of  sympathy,  because  human. 
The  tragic  imagination,  when  morbid  and  exclusive,  seeks 
such  themes;  and  if,  as  in  Greece,  they  exist  in  the  great 
tradition  of  the  race,  they  are  deeply  meditated,  as  in  the 
stories  of  GEdipus,  Phaedra  and  the  Orestean  trilogy.  In 
modern  tragedy  one  sups  on  horrors  quite  as  much  as  in 
the  palace  of  the  Atridae,  though  with  a  difference;  yet 
v^  it  is  the  same  presence  of  the  terrible  in  human  fate,  of 
^  the  issue  of  evil  in  sacrifice,  expiation,  suffering  for  the 
innocent  and  tragic  death  for  the  guilty,  it  is  the  pity  of 
it  even  in  lives  of  wrongful  passion,  that  loads  the  theme 
in  the  great  English  plays  as  in  the  old  Greek  examples. 
If  the  great  English  themes  as  symbols  of  life  seem  nearer 
to  reality  in  the  deepest  consciousness  of  modern  times, 
the  Greek  themes  in  their  own  age  were  nearer  to  that 
consciousness  in  the  antique;  the  supreme  crises  of  action 
and  passion,  of  man  doing  and  suffering,  do  not  change  in 
substance  but  in  the  kind  of  interest  taken  in  them  and 
the  interpretation  given.  Tragic  themes  are  not  instances 
of  crime  but  instances  of  nature;  it  is  because  they  are 
so  regarded  that  they  are  tolerated  by  the  contemplating 
mind;  the  will  and  responsibility  of  the  spectator  are  not 
roused  because  there  is  no  possibility  of  his  interference, 
and  he  is  not  called  on  to  give  judgment  or  to  correct,  but 
only  to  observe,  to  know.  This  detachment  from  the 
practical  sphere  is  a  condition  of  tragic  pleasure,  which 
lies  largely  in  the  illumination  of  life  given,  in  mere  knowl- 
edge; in  the  antique  world  it  was  predominantly  moral 
and  religious  knowledge;  in  the  modern  world  it  is  per- 
haps mainly  psychological  and  philosophic  knowledge. 
Philosophy,  therefore,  in  a  special  way  belongs  to  dra- 
matic poetry  and  is  its  natural  ally  in  deepening  appreci- 
ation of  it,  as  biography  is  of  lyrical  and  history  of 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  71 

narrative  poetry.  The  drama  addresses  the  reason,  and 
endeavors  to  enlighten  the  understanding  with  regard  to 
the  law  of  human  destiny;  it  is  essentially  philosophical, 
disclosing  the  abstract  of  truth,  the  constitution  of  the 
human  world,  the  law  of  character  and  event.  It  wears 
this  aspect  the  more  plainly  in  proportion  as  it  is  great, 
more  simply  representative,  more  profoundly  interpreta- 
tive; and  tragedy  holds  the  first  place  in  it  because  the 
problems  there  probed  engage  philosophical  interest  most 
deeply. 

Tragedy,  however,  does  not  monopolize  the  philo- 
sophical meaning  of  dramatic  poetry.  In  Shelley's  choral 
drama,  such  as  the  "Prometheus  Unbound,"  the  intellec- 
tual abstraction  is  the  fundamental  substance  of  the 
poem;  the  characters  are  themselves  allegorical  and  in 
their  mythical  personality  stand  for  principles  of  life, 
while  the  action  itself  is  a  symbol  of  human  progress. 
The  play  is  merely  a  pictorial  woof!  of  music  and  light, 
a  fleeting  vision  of  lovely  scenes,  unless  its  intellectual 
element  of  ethical  thought  be  clearly  grasped  to  give  it 
meaning;  and  it  is  in  this  significance  to  the  mind,  a 
philosophical  significance,  that  the  play  becomes  great, 
the  only  great  play  of  the  English  genius  in  poetry  in 
modern  times.  It  is  a  reconciliation  play,  conceived  in 
Shakespeare's  last  manner  and  as  such  is  cognate  to  "The 
Tempest'Vas  well  as  by  its  lyricism.  The  division  of  the 
thought  from  the  characters  is,  perhaps,  too  much  felt, 
the  philosophy  is  too  explicit  and  separable;  but  the 
theme,  transforming  the  Revolution  into  the  Millennium, 
is  a  great  argument  set  forth  dramatically  and  addressed 
to  the  reason.  The  most  interesting  drama,  however,  \ 
apart  from  tragedy,  is  that  in  which  life  is  set  forth  with 
the  effect  of  a  dream,  of  a  life  that  might  be,  of  which 


72  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

the  best  examples  in  English  are  the  plays  of  Shakes- 
peare's middle  period  and  his  last  romances.    They  are 
characterized  by  a  predominant  lyricism  in  the  treatment. 
The  lyrical  and  epical  elements  in  his  genius  were  the  first 
to  come  to  maturity;  in  the  English  and  Roman  plays  the 
epical  element  is  plain,  and  the  lyrical  element  appears  in 
the  early  comedies,  reaching  its  greatest  purity  and  height 
in  "A  Midsummer  Night's  Dream."    The  dream  atmos- 
phere of  this  play  gives,  perhaps,  the  type;  but  something 
of  the  same  quality  is  in  "Love's  Labour's  Lost,"  at  the 
beginning  of  his  career,  and  is  the  source  of  the  profound 
fascination  of  such  ripe  comedies  as  "Twelfth  Night," 
"As  You  Like  It"  and  "The  Merchant  of  Venice."    The 
dramatic  method  is  the  same  here  as  always,  — an  in- 
le!I5ivrfep5Tsentation  of  life  by  individual  examples;  but 
here  itTsTEe  romance  of  life  in  its  felicities  that  is  set 
forth,  with  only  such  saddening  as  more  endears  it.    In 
the  three  last  romances,  "Cymbeline,"  "A  Winter's  Tale" 
and  "The  Tempest,"  the  dream  is  still  the  atmosphere  of 
the  play,  but  the  felicity  is  enhanced  by  the  darker  ele- 
ments that  enter  into  the  themes,  and  the  hand  that  wrote 
these  dramas  is  one  that  had  been  dipped  deep  in  tragedy. 
They  are  the  climax  of  dramatic  art  in  England  as  an  art 
that  gives  pleasure  to  the  mind  and  also  renders  up  wis- 
dom.   In  other  anthors,  too,  it  is  the  lyrical  treatment  of 
life  in  this  dreamful  way  that  most  attracts  the  reader; 
in    Jonson,    in    Beaumont    and    Fletcher,    in    Milton's 
"Comus,"  the  pastoral  and  masque  elements  are  those  on 
which  the  memory  most  dwells.    After  tragedy  this  lyrical 
drama   of   Shelley,   Shakespeare   and   Milton  must  be 
reckoned  the  greatest  achievement  in  English,  and  the 
human  philosophy  which  it  gives  out  in  forms  of  beauty 
is  a  high-water  mark  of  the  wisdom  that  literature  reaches. 


DRAMATIC   POETRY  73 

Poetry  in  its  main  forms,  lyrical,  narrative  and  dra- 
matic, has  now  been  touched  upon  with  a  view  to  suggest 
its  nature,  the  way  of  approach  to  it,  and  the  spirit  that 
should  attend  the  reader.  It  is  obvious  that  the  divisional 
marks  are  terms  of  convenience;  there  are  lyrical  and 
epical  elements  in  drama,  dramatic  elements  in  lyric  and 
epic;  poetry  treats  life  as  a  whole,  and  its  power  is  in- 
tegral, one  power,  whether  put  forth  lyrically,  epically, 
or  dramatically.  Yet  it  is  true  that  lyrical  poetry  mainly 
exercises  the  emotions;  the  epic  discloses  life  in  its  ex- 
tension in  the  social  sphere;  the  drama  embodies  life  in- 
tensively; and  in  each  case  severally,  biography,  or  the 
love  of  the  author,  history,  or  a  sense  of  the  life  of  the 
race,  and  philosophy,  or  an  interpretation  of  human  na- 
ture, are  the  natural  aids  to  appreciation  in  each  kind. 
~The  end  of  poetry  is  to  illuminate  liie^from  within  the  ^ 
consciousness  of  the  reader,  to  realize  there  his  own  emo- 
tions, the  scene  of  life  in  the  world,  the  constitution  of 
passion  and  fate  in  man  and  his  circumstances,  to  make 
him  acquainted  with  the  nature  of  man  in  him.  Progress 
in  this  knowledge  is  usually  more  rapid  in  poetry  than  in 
prose,  because  of  the  condensation  of  liffe  achieved  by 
poetry,  the  use  of  the  economics  of  art  and  the  methods 
of  reason  in  statement,  and  the  emotional  vividness  that 
belongs  to  all  poetic  modes.  In  a  field  so  immense  as 
poetic  literature  presents,  much  must  necessarily  be  neg- 
lected; the  safest  guide  is  the  reader's  instinct,  the  choice 
made  by  his  own  temperament  and  powers.  The  degree 
of  appreciation  will  necessarily  vary  from  the  least  to  the 
most  complete;  but  it  need  not  be  complete  in  order  to 
be  useful.  The  greatest  books  are  those  in  which  one 
grows  the  most  and  the  longest.  The  end  being  to  know 
human  life,  what  man  in  his  essence  is,  what  he  has  been, 


74  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

what  he  is  capable  of,  there  is  no  goal  to  the  study;  and 
the  further  one  proceeds  in  it,  the  more,  perhaps,  he  is 
burdened  with  the  knowledge;  but  surely  the  destiny  of 
the  mind,  if  man  has  any  destiny,  is  to  lay  this  burden 
upon  itself. 


CHAPTER  V 

FICTION 

The  art  of  literature,  when  it  works  in  prose,  does  not 
change  its  method  from  that  employed  in  poetry  nor  is 
its  material  different.  Prose  makes  a  less  rigorous  de- 
mand upon  the  reader's  attention  and  ability;  but  the 
action  of  the  mind  involved  is  the  same  as  in  verse,  the 
aims  of  study  are  the  same  and  the  modes  of  appreciation 
are  identical.  Art,  or  the  universal  form  into  which 
reason  casts  experience  by  means  of  the  imagination,  con- 
trols great  works  of  prose  as  it  rules  great  poems ;  fiction 
stands  at  the  head  of  prose  because  it  is  the  sphere  in 
which  such  art  works  most  freely  and  effectively;  and  in 
proportion  to  the  presence  of  such  art  is  fiction  great  and 
enduring.  Poetry  achieves  the  extreme  of  condensation 
of  life  and  truth,  and  hence  the  appreciation  of  it  requires 
a  mind  naturally  rapid  and  strong  in  apprehension;  a 
high-strung  nature  finds  poetry  fitted  to  it;  but  the  reader 
generally,  less  intense  in  mental  application  and  concen- 
tration, prefers  prose  as  more  adapted  to  the  normal 
movement  of  his  mind.  This  choice  continues  to  operate 
even  in  prose,  and  the  effort  of  the  mind  is  relaxed  in 
proportion  as  formative  art  is  less  present  in  the  work  and 
what  is  told  is  set  forth  in  its  natural  and  raw  state  of 
facts  as  they  occur.  Every  nation  has  tales,  and  primi- 
tive people  possess  a  store  of  folk-lore,  but  fiction  as  a 
special  mode  of  literature  develops  somewhat  late  in  civili- 

75 


76  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

zation.  It  has  a  literary  ancestry,  an  historic  evolution, 
which  can  readily  be  studied,  and  in  its  origins  it  is  much 
mixed  with  poetry.  In  our  own  time  it  has  come  to  fill  so 
large  a  portion  of  the  literary  field  as  to  be  engrossing; 
it  is  in  a  peculiar  sense  the  people's  literature  in  our 
democracies,  characterized  by  popular  education,  by  home 
leisure,  and  by  an  extraordinary  awakening  of  curiosity 
in  large  masses.  It  is  a  powerful  means  for  the  spread  of 
information  of  all  kinds  and  for  the  propagation  of  ideas; 
all  knowledge  is  most  interesting  when  given  out  in  the 
form  of  imagination,  and  the  demand  for  knowledge  was 
never  so  great  as  now;  it  is  altogether  natural  that  the 
novel,  the  most  flexible  form  of  writing  for  imaginative 
propaganda,  should  be  the  preferred  modern  form  of 
literature. 

If  one  searches  for  the  occasion  of  fiction  and  considers 
its  wide  range  of  topic  and  interest,  it  would  seem  that  no 
more  satisfactory  answer  can  be  given  than  mere  human 
curiosity.  In  response  to  this,  all  that  is  knowable  now 
takes  on  the  form  of  the  novel.  In  approaching  the  field 
choice  seems  almost  impossible,  so  varied  are  the  interests 
involved  and  all  with  many  claims  to  regard.  The  young 
mind,  however,  has  a  native  instinct  of  its  own  grounded 
in  human  nature.  The  first  interest  of  men  is  in  action, 
in  the  event,  the  thing  which  is  done.  This  is  the  interest 
of  the  boy,  of  the  practical  man,  of  the  man  whose  medi- 
tative and  fuller  spiritual  life  is  only  begun.  The  type  of 
fiction  of  this  sort  is  "Robinson  Crusoe."  It  is  a  tale  of 
the  facts  of  life  in  a  wonderfully  interesting  form,  and  the 
literary  life  of  thousands  has  begun  with  it.  The  more 
exalted  type  is  the  novels  of  Dumas,  where  in  a  romantic 
form  the  life  of  action  is  set  forth  with  the  interest  of 
vividness,  surprise  and   the   fascination   of  adventure. 


FICTION  77 

Nothing  can  be  better  than  Dumas  to  arouse  in  a  boy  the 
sense  of  the  power  of  life,  the  ambition  of  doing,  the 
wonder  of  the  things  that  can  be  done,  —  the  whole  charm 
and  marvel  of  the  world  of  the  deed.  Romance  is  at  its 
highest  in  this  field,  and  the  awakening  influence  of  ro- 
mance on  the  mind  cannot  be  overvalued;  it  opens  out 
the  roads  of  all  the  earth  and  the  seas,  and  gives  the 
career  of  a  gallant  will  in  meeting  the  unknown  and  find- 
ing the  hidden  treasure  of  a  man's  destiny.  Herodotus 
was  in  history  the  very  type  of  such  spirit  as  this,  and 
it  made  his  history  one  of  the  great  books  of  the  world. 
Travelers  often  show  and  breed  the  spirit  of  their  tales, 
and  the  heroes  are  made  of  it  from  the  voyage  of  the 
Argo  to  the  days  of  the  search  for  the  Pole.  In  imagina- 
tive literature  Dumas  is  the  great  example,  and  in  the 
many  volumes  that  bear  his  name  there  is  endless  store 
of  the  most  inspiriting  kind  of  such  action. 

The  first  advance  is  made  when  the  mind  is  no  longer 
content  with  the  action  in  itself,  but  meditates  it,  and 
finds  its  true  interest  to  lie  in  what  the  act  reveals  of  the 
character  of  the  man  who  performs  it.  In  other  words, 
character  is  a  higher  interest  than  action,  and  supplants 
it  as  the  object  of  attention  in  a  maturing  mind.  Char- 
acter is,  in  fact,  a  summary  of  action  and  contains  both 
the  effect  of  past  and  the  promise  of  future  acts;  it  is,  as 
it  were,  a  brief  abstract  of  action,  its  potentiality.  Man 
here  comes  into  his  rights  as  the  leading  interest  in  the 
scene,  independent  of  the  events.  Character  is  necessarily 
ideal  in  literature;  it  is  set  forth  by  its  ruling  passion,  and 
in  the  beginning  is  simple  rather  than  complex,  since  its 
presentation  is  limited  to  that  class  of  action  in  which  its 
distinction  resides;  one  reason  of  the  effectiveness  of 
character  in  its  more  antique  or  primitive  embodiments 


78  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

is  this  simplicity  flowing  from  the  extreme  ideality  or 
abstractness  of  the  t)TDe.  The  Greek  heroes  share  some- 
what in  the  trait  of  being  by  virtue  of  which  the  gods  are 
ideal,  each  having  a  function  of  his  own,  being  an  Ajax, 
Patroclus,  Orestes,  Jason,  Heracles,  and  hence  marked 
out  for  his  work.  Character  is  thus  in  its  early  forms 
action  viewed  in  one  mode,  as  it  were,  and  compacted  into 
human  power,  unified,  individualized,  personified.  The 
act  is  of  interest  in  itself  still,  but  it  is  of  more  interest 
as  being  the  act  of  Achilles  or  Ulysses  and  as  declaring 
what  manner  of  men  they  were.  Character  is  more  pro- 
found than  action,  and  hence  to  a  mature  mind  is  more 
engaging.  This  is  especially  noticeable  in  those  persons 
who  are  named  characters  in  our  common  speech,  —  the 
usually  eccentric  personalities  who  are  peculiarly  speci- 
mens of  human  nature  out  of  the  ordinary,  and  by  their 
words  or  actions  give  a  fresh,  piquant,  or  humorous 
impression.  Without  regard  to  such  exceptions,  however, 
character  awakes  a  profound  interest  because  in  its  types 
are  stored  ideals  of  what  men  are,  the  forms  cast  by  the 
moral  habits  and  the  aspirations  and  experiences  of  the 
race,  the  qualities  consonantly  to  be  found  within  the 
limits  of  one  personality,  the  discords  possible  within  the 
same  range;  character  is  thus  a  compend  of  the  results  of 
life,  of  its  possibilities  in  the  individual,  of  its  fusion  in 
a  single  mold.  In  this  stage  character  is  not  divorced 
from  action,  but  both  are  present;  the  character  is  seen 
acting;  the  actions  however  various  are  resumed  in  the 
character.  The  type  of  such  interest,  of  balance  between 
action  and  character  such  that  nevertheless  the  character 
rather  than  the  action  impresses  the  mind  and  memory, 
is  given  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's  novels,  and  the  unique  place 
that  Scott  holds  in  English  fiction  is  due  to  this  firm 


FICTION  79 

grasp  of  life  in  the  form  of  character  which  is  still  kept 
close  to  action.  This  is  the  trait  by  which  his  art  as  a 
creator  is  so  supreme,  though  the  power  with  which  he 
seizes  the  reader  also  owes  much  to  the  intrinsic  nature 
of  the  character  displayed,  to  its  being  national  in  type 
whether  Scotch  or  English  and  showing  that  nationality 
strongly  and  finely  in  essential  traits,  to  its  being  doubly 
presented  as  of  the  peasant  and  the  noble  classes,  and  in 
each  exemplified  with  truth  to  the  life  of  the  one  and  the 
ideal  of  the  other,  and  also  to  its  being  inclusive  in  its 
eccentric  or  abnormal  instances  of  so  much  that  is  plain 
human  nature,  so  that  one  may  say  indeed  that  no  types 
are  so  universally  true  as  those  which  seem  most  peculiar 
in  his  pages,  such  as  the  old  antiquary.  Noma  or  the 
saints  of  the  Covenant.  Scott  is  the  great  master  of  char- 
acter; not  that  other  English  novelists  have  not  equaled 
him  in  such  portrayal,  but  none  have  created  character 
upon  such  a  scale,  in  such  profusion,  with  such  social 
comprehensiveness,  and  at  the  same  time  with  such  un- 
failing human  reality.  In  his  works  one  always  finds  the 
substance  is  not  the  stream  of  events,  however  romantic 
and  involved  in  mystery,  but  man  acting  and  suffering; 
not  the  plot,  but  the  character.  There  is  a  perennial  at- 
traction in  character  that  does  not  pertain  to  mere  story; 
and  this  mastery  of  character  is  the  trait  which  makes 
Scott  to  be  so  often  re-read  and  to  be  a  favorite  in  later 
as  well  as  in  youthful  years. 

Character  develops  a  new  kind  of  interest  when  atten- 
tion is  fastened,  not  on  what  it  is,  but  on  how  it  came  to 
be  what  it  is.  The  internal  life  here  comes  to  the  fore; 
the  evolution  of  personality,  a  train  of  inward  phenomena, 
is  substituted  for  a  course  of  external  events  as  the  sub- 
ject of  interest,  however  much  events  may  be  mixed  with 


8o  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

the  story.  This  study  of  motivation  and  internal  reaction 
marks  the  final  stage  of  the  development  of  the  novel  in 
its  presentation  of  life  and  completes  the  circuit  of  its 
sphere.  Psychology,  analysis,  introspection,  characterize 
it,  and  it  requires  in  the  reader  an  intellectual  interest 
perhaps  stronger  than  the  imaginative  interest.  The  his- 
tory of  a  soul,  rather  as  a  phase  of  inward  experience  than 
of  action,  is  the  focus  of  attention.  The  introspective 
novel  in  the  emotional  sphere,  the  novel  of  sentiment,  is 
an  early  form  of  such  analysis  and  is  illustrated  in 
Richardson,  but  in  its  higher  and  more  complex  examples 
the  psychological  novel  full-grown  naturally  allies  itself 
to  some  theory  of  morals,  some  abstract  element  in  re- 
ligion or  ethics,  and  sets  forth  life  as  an  education  of  the 
character  in  such  a  view.  The  type,  perhaps,  in  which 
the  various  constituents  are  the  most  clear  and  at  the 
same  time  noble,  is  George  Eliot's  "Romola,"  in  which 
great  and  conflicting  ideals  of  life  are  presented  through 
the  medium  of  the  leading  characters  by  a  psychological 
and  largely  introspective  treatment.  Her  interest  in  life 
was  that  of  a  philosophical  moralist,  and  her  fiction 
showed  increasingly  the  analytical  habit.  The  simpler 
blends  of  character  and  action  in  her  earlier  tales  give 
place  in  her  fully  ripened  work  to  a  wide  and  complex 
exposition  of  the  nature  of  her  persons  in  which  the 
element  of  thought  finally  overweights  the  narrative.  Just 
as  dramatic  poetry  issues  in  a  philosophical  interest,  so 
the  novel,  as  it  develops  power  and  grasps  life  more  pro- 
foundly and  naturally,  appeals  with  greater  directness  to 
the  intellect  in  its  effort  to  understand  human  life.  It  may 
develop  this  intellectual  quality  in  either  of  the  three 
forms  of  pure  action,  of  synthetic  or  of  analytic  char- 
acter, but  the  quality  is  most  pronounced,  pervasive  and 


FICTION  8i 

engrossing  in  the  last.  In  such  writers  as  Henry  James 
and  George  Meredith  it  reaches  a  climax.  Literature, 
moreover,  must  always  be  viewed  historically  as  obeying 
the  general  law  of  evolution  in  society;  its  movement  is 
constantly  toward  a  representation  of  the  inward  nature 
of  life,  to  bring  out  man's  self -consciousness,  to  reveal 
personality.  The  problems  of  personality  are  those  which 
finally  engage  the  mature  mind  in  a  highly  developed 
literature,  and  the  psychological  novel  is  the  center  where 
this  study  is  most  active.  This  line  of  development  is 
not  peculiar  to  fiction,  but  belongs  to  literature  in  general, 
which  tends  more  and  more  to  become  a  confessional  of 
the  souPs  experience,  a  dissection  of  life,  a  pursuit  of  the 
motives  and  reactions  of  the  inner  world,  of  the  moods 
and  methods  of  thought  and  passion  in  their  intimate  cells, 
of  all  the  secrets,  in  one  word,  of  personality. 

The  interest  of  the  novel  being  thus  distributed  in  these 
three  general  modes  of  action,  character  in  action,  and 
personality  for  its  own  sake,  the  story  itself  may  be  un- 
folded in  any  one  of  many  ways  or  by  a  blend  of  several, 
the  chief  elements  being  plot,  character,  situation,  dia- 
logue, sentiment,  and  the  like,  variously  compounded  ac- 
cording to  the  talent  and  purpose  of  the  writer.  A  greater 
emphasis  on  any  one  of  these  elements  gives  a  special 
quality  to  the  work  and  makes  a  particular  appeal  to  some 
one  class  of  readers  whose  taste  is  for  that  element. 
Whatever  methods  be  employed,  the  enduring  worth  of 
the  novel  in  its  English  examples  depends  much  on  the 
success  of  the  writer  in  giving  the  scene  of  life  as  a  whole, 
in  securing  the  illusion  of  a  full  world,  or  one  that  at 
least  is  complete  for  the  characters  inhabiting  it.  The 
perfection  of  this  environing  of  the  characters  with  a 
world  is  seen  in  Shakespeare's  plays;  and  in  proportion 


82  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

as  the  novelists  achieve  this  effect,  and  at  the  same  time 
obtain  human  reality,  they  show  the  highest  imaginative 
power,  true  creative  faculty.  There  is  no  surer  sign  of 
greatness  in  a  novel  than  this  large  grasp  of  general  life, 
the  crowded  stage,  the  throng  of  affairs,  the  sense  of  a 
world  of  men.  It  was  thus  that  Dickens  began  to  dis- 
play his  remarkable  faculty  in  ^'Pickwick  Papers,"  ren- 
dering the  various  face  of  English  life  and  manners  in  a 
series  of  loosely  connected  sketches.  Character  and 
manners,  seconded  by  genial  good  nature  and  humorous- 
ness,  make  the  perennial  attraction  of  that  marvelous 
piece  of  entertainment,  which  was  the  precursor  of  great 
novels  conceived  on  more  rigorous  lines  of  construction 
and  with  more  breadth  and  poignancy  of  interest,  but  all 
alike  in  this  power  to  render  life  as  a  miscellaneous  scene 
of  human  activity.  Scott  similarly  in  his  greatest  tales 
never  fails  to  give  largeness  to  his  world  and  to  fill  it  with 
currents  of  social  life,  with  events  of  high  interest  and 
with  a  multitude  of  persons.  Thackeray  in  a  narrower 
sphere  of  society  follows  the  same  method  in  ^'Vanity 
Fair,"  and  Fielding  in  "Tom  Jones."  In  all  these  authors 
thahero  counts  for  little;  the  particular  tale  of  individuals 
involved,  the  plot,  the  mere  personal  story,  however  well 
constructed  and  interesting  that  part  of  the  work  may  be, 
is  yet  represented  as  a  portion  of  the  world  only,  a  world 
that  embraces  them  in  its  larger  being.  In  ^^David  Cop- 
perfield"  the  tale  of  Emily  and  that  of  Agnes  divide  the 
interest,  but  they  seem  episodes;  it  is  the  picture  of  life 
as  a  whole  that  dwells  in  the  memory.  In  this  larger 
world  it  may  be  character  and  manners  or  the  interplay 
of  events,  it  may  be  superficial  movement,  as  in  the  pic- 
aresque novel  generally,  or  it  may  be  profound  social 
movement,  as  in  the  greater  historical  novels,  that  holds 


FICTION  83 

the  front  place;  but  whatever  the  method,  the  substance 
is  of  the  world  of  men. 

The  highest  degree  of  universality  and  inclusiveness 
is  reached  in  Cervantes's  "Don  Quixote,'^  which  while 
remaining  a  tale  of  individuals  sums  up  the  national  scene, 
the  elements  of  Spain,  its  genius,  its  history,  and  also 
gives  through  this  the  sense  of  human  life  in  the  broad, 
the  truth  of  human  nature  as  it  is  everywhere.  "Don 
Quixote"  is  the  greatest  of  all  novels  because  singly  it 
contains  so  large  a  world.  In  lesser  novels  of  similar  type 
the  world  set  forth  does  not  lose  unity,  it  does  not  seem 
partial,  but  yet  it  comprehends  only  some  portion  of  the 
scene,  as  in  the  provincial  novel  generally,  or  some  strip 
of  time,  as  in  the  historical  novel.  The  breadth  of  the 
theme  makes  a  large  part  of  the  intrinsic  value  of  such 
novels,  which  offer  an  embodiment,  for  example,  of 
present  life,  or  a  panorama  of  an  epoch,  or  a  rehabilita- 
tion of  an  antique  age.  Irish  tales  are  good  in  proportion 
as  they  give  the  Irish  spirit  and  environment.  Reade's 
"The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth"  is  a  great  historical  novel 
because  of  its  breadth  of  treatment,  and  Kingsley's  "Hy- 
patia"  excels  because  of  its  comprehensiveness,  its  being 
a  summary  of  one  moment  of  ancient  life  intensely 
imagined.  In  all  these  novels  there  is  a  theme,  which  in 
a  certain  sense  exceeds  and  contains  the  personal  theme, 
a  theme  of  time,  —  of  Alexandria,  of  the  Middle  Ages, 
of  Ireland.  It  is  not  at  all  essential  that  this  outer  theme 
should  be  rendered  with  historical  accuracy  or  be  true 
in  its  details  in  the  sense  of  fact.  What  is  necessary  is 
that  an  illusion  of  truth  should  be  arrived  at  by  fidelity 
to  the  general  traits  of  the  city,  the  age,  or  the  land,  so 
that  the  world  of  the  story  shall  be  representative  of  what 
was.    One  reason  of  the  facility  with  which  the  historical 


84  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

novel  is  written  and  received  is  because  this  outer  theme, 
Rome  or  Italy  or  France,  is  in  itself  great,  and  an  undy- 
ing interest  of  powerful  fascination  belongs  to  it  inde- 
pendent of  the  particular  tale  that  may  be  narrated  as  a 
personal  history  within  its  limits.  Such  a  theme  naturally 
induces  a  series,  the  Jacobite  novels  of  Scott,  the  Indian 
and  sea-tales  of  Cooper;  each  particular  story  is  but  one 
product  of  it,  and  no  author  exhausts  it  though  he  may 
exhaust  his  own  power  of  dealing  with  it.  The  theme,  the 
world  of  men  involved,  diminishes  in  importance  in  pro- 
portion as  the  particular  tale  makes  head  and  absorbs 
attention;  but,  in  general,  great  novelists  give  the  scene 
of  the  world,  the  picture  of  life,  whether  in  a  contempo- 
rary or  historical  range,  the  first  place  in  their  repre- 
sentation. This  is  true  without  reference  to  the  scale  of 
that  world;  it  is,  for  example,  the  method  of  Goldsmith 
in  "The  Vicar  of  Wakefield."  The  novel  is  indeed  the 
form  of  literary  art  best  adapted  to  representing  man  as 
a  social  being  and  to  setting  forth  in  imagination  social 
phenomena;  this  is  one  reason,  also,  why  its  evolution  is 
so  late  in  the  history  of  literature. 

The  art  of  literature  in  passing  into  the  novel  does  not 
lose  its  function  of  presenting  general  truth.  That  is  still 
its  main  aim.  The  necessity  of  doing  so,  in  fact,  underlies 
all  that  has  been  said  of  the  part  taken  in  the  novel  by 
the  scene  of  life,  the  illusion  that  it  must  give  of  a  world, 
whether  in  the  sphere  of  manners  or  history,  not  actual 
but  containing  the  general  reality  of  human  events  in  a 
particular  time  or  country  and  of  human  nature  in  its 
essential  traits.  There  is  an  epical  element,  as  is  plain, 
in  the  description  which  fiction  of  the  sort  that  has  been 
treated  gives  of  life.  When  the  social  theme  is  less 
prominently  brought  forward  and  the  particular  story  of 


FICTION  8s 

a  few  individuals  enlists  attention  for  its  own  sake,  then 
the  novel  avails  itself  of  the  same  resources  used  in 
dramatic  art.  It  represents  the  general  law  of  life  and 
the  constitution  of  human  nature  by  means  of  examples, 
and  the  worth  of  the  novel  depends,  just  as  in  a  play, 
on  the  simplicity,  clearness  and  profundity  with  which  it 
accomplishes  the  task.  There  is  no  material  difference 
between  the  novel  and  the  drama  so  far  as  the  handling 
of  plot,  situation  and  dialogue  are  concerned,  except  that 
in  a  novel  the  writer  has  a  free  hand  and  can  use  more 
means  of  displaying  his  characters  and  their  career.  In 
George  Eliot's  ''Adam  Bede,"  for  example,  there  is,  it  is 
true,  a  background  of  country  and  clerical  life  and  of 
religious  agitation;  but  the  story  is  mainly  conducted  in 
the  fortunes  of  a  few  individuals  placed  in  the  foreground. 
It  is  a  tragic  history  that  is  related.  Its  profound  in- 
terest is  its  life  interest,  the  illustration  it  gives  of  human 
events,  the  light  it  throws  on  principles  of  conduct,  be- 
lief, the  operation  of  wrong,  facts  of  passion,  theories  of 
sin  and  salvation  and  the  like.  The  story  exists  and  was 
written  for  the  sake  of  its  teaching  power;  and  this  is 
more  manifest  than  in  the  drama  because  in  the  medium 
of  prose  the  teaching  can  be  more  plainly  brought  out 
and  emphasized.  Such  novels  are  dramatic  in  their  in- 
terest; they  cover  the  same  tracts  of  life  as  the  drama, 
whether  in  comedy  or  tragedy,  and  the  mode  of  mental 
approach  to  them  is  the  same,  except  that  the  novelist 
makes  understanding  of  bis  theme  more  easy  for  the 
reader  by  the  greater  fullness  of  the  presentation  and  by 
the  comment  that,  whether  explicit  or  implicit,  is  always 
to  be  found  in  the  text.  It  may  be  said,  indeed,  that  there 
is  no  form  of  poetic  truth  that  the  novel  in  one  way  or 
another  may  not  present,  usually  but  not  always  with  less 


86  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

intensity;  the  analysis  of  the  novel  discloses  the  same 
substance  as  poetry,  the  same  fundamental  human  life 
which  is  the  matter  of  all  literature.  Symbolical  truth  is 
that  which  is,  perhaps,  thought  of  as  most  characteristic 
of  poetry;  but  it  exists  in  the  novel  quite  as  plainly  and 
in  its  most  apparent  forms.  Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress" is  a  work  of  fiction  which  has  all  its  meaning  in  the 
spiritual  truth  which  is  there  set  forth  in  allegory,  and 
it  is  one  of  the  most  widely  distributed  of  English  books. 
The  type  of  the  method,  is,  however,  rather  to  be  found 
in  Hawthorne.  In  his  short  romantic  tales  it  is  commonly 
used,  as,  for  example,  in  "Rappaccini's  Daughter"  and 
"The  Artist  of  the  Beautiful,"  where  the  reader  who  does 
not  interpret  the  symbols  misses  the  meaning.  "The 
Scarlet  Letter"  is  a  still  more  striking  example  of  the 
symbolic  representation  of  life;  the  background  of  the 
Puritan  world  is  but  slightly  indicated  by  the  romancer, 
but  he  blazes  forth  its  essence  by  a  series  of  picturesque 
scenes  that  are  like  a  sign  language  of  the  imagination. 
The  same  author's  "Marble  Faun"  pursues  the  same 
method;  the  world  involved  is  but  lamely  made  out,  and 
so  inadequately  that  even  Donatello  seems  an  alien  in  it, 
like  the  rest,  but  none  the  less  a  theory  of  sin  is  sym- 
bolized by  means  of  it  with  a  refinement  and  intimacy 
such  that  one  seems  rather  to  be  looking  at  pictures  and 
statues  than  listening  to  a  tale  of  events.  To  render  life 
by  symbols  of  landscape  and  idyllic  situations  belongs 
peculiarly  to  poetry,  but  in  the  Greek  novel  it  is  found 
as  charmingly  set  forth  as  in  verse,  and  the  pastoral 
enters  as  an  element  into  much  prose  fiction  in  various 
forms.  In  Watts  Dunton's  "Aylwin"  characteristically 
poetic  modes  are  prevailingly  employed  to  render  gypsy 
nature.    So  near  is  romance  to  poetry  that  it  often  makes 


FICTION  87 

the  distinct  poetic  appeal,  as,  to  take  a  great  instance,  in 
Blackmore's  ^'Lorna  Doone."  The  lyric,  dramatic  and 
epic  elements,  being  fundamental  in  literature,  are  all  to 
be  found  in  prose  fiction,  and  the  art  employed  is  the  same 
creative  imagination  constructing  an  illusory  world  in 
order  to  set  forth  the  general  truth  of  human  life. 

Fiction,  therefore,  in  its  great  examples  approaches 
poetry  because  it  uses  the  same  material  to  the  same  ends 
and  proceeds  by  the  same  method  of  art,  universalizing 
life  and  formulating  it;  but  it  differs  from  poetry  because 
it  is  less  delicate  in  the  selection  of  its  material,  less  ex- 
acting of  a  high  degree  of  art  in  dealing  with  it,  and 
directed  to  utilities  that  poetry  ignores.  The  art  of  fiction 
is  two-faced;  it  is  both  a  fine  and  a  useful  art;  and  if  on 
the  one  hand  in  works  of  great  genius  it  comes  nigh  to 
the  supreme  masters  of  the  drama,  on  the  other  extreme 
it  neighbors  that  universal  human  service  of  which  the 
modern  name  is  journalism,  —  the  literature  of  informa- 
tion, propagandism,  world-wide  curiosity,  discussion, 
speculation,  of  which  it  may  be  said  more  truly  than  of 
any  other  form  of  writing  that  nothing  human  is  alien  to 
it.  Journalism  is  the  most  catholic  form  of  the  written 
word.  The  novel  is  the  next  most  embracing,  and  its 
flexibility  as  a  social  instrument  under  present  conditions 
has  given  it  the  commanding  practical  place  which  it  holds 
among  readers.  It  is  by  the  novel  that  the  life-knowIe3ge 
of  modern  peoples  is  most  fully  realized  to  themselves, 
in  every  degree  of  the  scale  of  society,  in  popular  appre- 
hension. This  great  change  was  largely  effected  by  the 
advent  of  democracy.  In  the  old  literature  the  national 
tradition  and  morality  were  concentrated  in  the  history, 
real  or  imaginary,  of  the  aristocratic  class  with  but  slight 
popular  elements,  and  this  was  handed  down  in  poetry 


88  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

and  chronicle  and  tale;  but  with  the  coming  of  modern 
democracy  the  popular  life  itself  came  into  the  field  of 
interest,  and  literature  giving  more  and  more  attention  to 
the  citizen  life  ended  by  assigning  to  the  common  lot  of 
men  the  place  which  has  formerly  been  held  by  the  aris- 
tocracy. The  democratizing  of  literature  which  began 
with  Richardson  and  Fielding,  in  the  novel,  and  with 
Burns  and  Wordsworth,  in  poetry,  resulted  in  the  last 
century  in  England  in  a  representation  of  life  in  all  its 
classes,  provinces,  and  interests,  such  as  no  civilization 
had  ever  before  placed  on  record  about  itself.  The  read- 
ing class  was  democratic,  and  men  like  to  read  about 
themselves,  to  see  their  own  lives  reflected,  their  opinions 
expressed,  and  their  ideals  defined;  they  also  desire  in- 
formation about  the  way  other  men  live  whose  modes  of 
behavior  and  thought,  though  they  may  be  members  of 
the  same  society,  are  not  well  or  intimately  known;  a 
public  thus  came  into  existence  for  which  the  minute  and 
detailed  portrayal  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  English- 
men, and  of  every  nook  of  English  ground,  was  interest- 
ing. The  field  of  human  life  covered  by  the  novel 
became  immense  in  variety  and  comprehensiveness. 
There  were  certain  preferred  tastes  inherent  in  English 
society,  and  the  English  novel  showed  these  preferences; 
the  writers,  too,  could  deal  individually  only  with  such 
phases  of  life  as  they  knew;  the  novel  remained  socially 
aristocratic  and  middle-class,  with  an  episodic  attention 
to  the  lower  state  of  society,  but  it  faithfully  reflected  the 
consciousness  of  the  English  people,  and  the  growth  of 
the  democracy  is  shown  in  the  ever  increasing  emergence 
of  the  literature  of  the  least  favored,  the  stricken  and 
abandoned  class.  Dickens  was  the  leader  and  marks  the 
powerful  entrance  of  philanthropy  into  the  novel,  and  the 


FICTION  89 

portraiture  of  the  lower  class  by  him  and  others  perhaps 
made  up  in  genius  what  it  lacked  in  quantity.  The  Eng- 
lish, however,  are  not  a  frank  race,  and  various  as  their 
picture  of  life  is  in  the  novel,  it  is  still  discreet  and  con- 
trolled. France,  in  the  representation  of  life  given  by 
her  novelists,  exceeded  the  English  in  the  comprehensive 
fullness  of  the  portrayal;  both  Balzac  and  Zola  attempted 
a  survey  of  life  more  systematic  and  complete  than  any 
single  English  author  conceived,  and  the  French  novel 
surpasses  the  English  as  an  ample  expression  of  human 
nature  in  all  social  degrees  and  conditions.  There  was 
an  advantage  in  the  concentration  of  the  national 
tradition  and  morality  in  the  old  literature  which  was 
especially  favorable  to  poetry;  on  the  other  hand  the 
dispersion  of  interest  by  the  democracy  through  all  classes 
of  society  and  in  all  parts  of  the  national  body  creates  a 
stronger  social  bond,  develops  humanitarianism  and  is 
vastly  more  informing  to  the  mind.  The  exposure  of 
human  conditions  accomplished  by  the  novel  is  a  powerful 
element  in  social  progress. 

The  expansion  of  the  historical  consciousness  of  modern 
society  was  an  element  hardly  less  important  than  the 
democratization  of  fiction  as  an  influence  on  the  develop- 
ment of  the  novel.  What  is  loosely  termed  the  Gothic 
revival  with  its  resuscitation  of  the  mediaeval  age  and  its 
discovery  of  the  primitive  poetry  of  the  North,  and  the 
Hellenic  revival  with  its  reinvigoration  of  Latin  studies 
and  its  discovery  of  archaeology  in  the  South,  opened  be- 
tween them  the  whole  past  of  Europe  through  its  entire 
extent,  while  the  developing  contact  of  England  with  the 
East  brought  with  it  the  fiction  of  the  Orient  as  well  as 
its  poetry.  History  in  many  forms  was  pursued  in  order 
to  unveil  the  past  and  the  distant,  and  it  laid  open  new 


90  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

material  for  the  novelist;  as  soon  as  Scott  had  so  bril- 
liantly shown  that  history  was  most  fascinating  in  the 
form  of  imaginative  romance,  the  novel  entered  upon  its 
career  of  recreating  the  past  with  extraordinary  vigor, 
and  it  has  found  in  this  field  a  scope  and  diversity  that 
make  the  historical  novel  perhaps  the  preferred  form  of 
the  art.  The  history  of  the  world  has  been  rewritten  in 
the  last  century  as  fiction;  even  what  is  most  recondite 
and  obscure,  and  belongs  to  the  world  of  the  learned,  has 
been  clothed  with  color  and  vitality  as  if  contemporary, 
in  the  tales  of  Roman  Africa,  Egypt  and  Byzantium  in 
which  the  French  especially  excel.  In  the  more  bar- 
barous parts  of  history,  such  as  the  East  of  Europe,  native 
writers  have  reconstructed  the  past  and  made  it  available 
for  other  nations.  The  reader  of  the  historical  novel,  in 
fact,  without  effort  commands  an  intelligent  knowledge  of 
the  history  of  the  European  world  and  its  antecedent 
classical  sources  such  as  would  not  have  been  possible 
even  to  a  scholar  in  the  last  age. 

The  novel  thus  contains  a  vast  fund  of  information 
which  it  diffuses.  It  is  a  teaching  power  of  immense  effi- 
ciency, and  still  more  useful  for  the  spread  of  ideas  than 
for  the  diffusion  of  facts.  It  has  developed  a  power  of 
propagandism  which  has  previously  been  found  mainly 
in  eloquent  discourse.  The  type  of  such  use  of  the  novel 
is  Mrs.  Stowe's  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin."  In  a  lower  form 
it  is  constantly  employed  as  an  instrument  of  discussion. 
A  good  example  is  Bronte's  "Jane  Eyre,"  in  which  a  moral 
situation  is  presented  in  conflict  with  human  law.  Every 
cause  finds  in  the  novel  a  mode  of  presenting  the  facts, 
and  advocating  the  ideas,  which  it  is  especially  concerned 
to  make  known.  One  of  the  most  precious  of  human 
rights,  the  right  to  be  heard,  is  practically  secured  by  the 


FICTION  91 

wide-spread  and  habitual  employment  of  fiction  as  a 
public  forum.  All  knowledge  gains  by  being  put  into  the 
form  of  a  tale;  it  travels  faster,  it  enters  the  mind  more 
vividly,  it  enlists  the  emotions  more  powerfully.  The 
power  of  propaganda  is  one  of  the  chief  traits  of  the  novel 
as  a  social  force.  The  novel,  moreover,  vivifies  intellec- 
tual interest  of  all  kinds.  It  follows,  for  example,  in  the 
wake  of  scientific  discovery,  of  exploration,  of  mere  specu- 
lation, and  forthwith  builds  a  tale  on  the  new  ground. 
The  most  recent  knowledge  of  foreign  lands,  wars,  in- 
dustrial adventure,  commercial  progress,  social  experi- 
ment, is  immediately  popularized  in  this  form.  Every 
community,  every  employment  of  men,  every  idea  is 
gathered  in  this  drag-net  of  the  time;  the  novel  has  be- 
come the  epitome  of  the  modern  world. 

In  the  case  of  a  form  of  literature  so  variously  char- 
acterized, so  miscellaneously  reproductive  of  experience 
and  in  its  mass  hardly  to  be  divided  from  life  itself,  the 
reader  finds  himself  bewildered  and  choice  is  difficult. 
The  literary  principle  of  worth  is  plain,  but  other  values 
enter  in,  and  disturb  and  deflect  the  decision  of  the  mind. 
The  utiHties  of  reading  are  so  many,  and  in  some  cases 
so  attractive,  that  the  confinement  of  choice  by  the  prin- 
ciple of  art  is  often  felt  to  be  a  hardship  and  to  result  in 
substantial  loss.  To  state  the  principle  broadly,  fiction 
as  an  art  has  worth  in  proportion  to  the  fullness  of  its 
representation,  to  the  arc  of  life  it  includes  within  a  single 
work,  where  the  treatment  is  extensive  in  method,  or  to 
the  intensity  of  its  representation,  to  the  power  of  life  it 
includes,  when  the  treatment  is  intensive.  The  more  of 
life,  in  extension  or  intension,  that  any  book  has,  the 
greater  is  the  book.  This  is  the  general  principle,  true 
of  all  literature,  because  the  literary  art  has  for  its  end 


92  APPRECIATION  OF   LITERATURE 

to  concentrate  life  and  truth  by  the  use  of  the  imagination 
in  examples  that  are  finally  interpreted  by  the  mind,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  as  universal  symbols.  Those 
novels  are  highest  in  literary  interest  which  accomplish 
this  purpose  with  most  fullness.  "Don  Quixote"  has  al- 
ready been  cited  as  the  type  of  such  greatness  and  rank; 
and,  in  general,  the  sign  of  fullness  of  meaning  in  the 
extensive  sense  is,  as  has  been  said,  the  presence  in  the 
novel  of  the  great  scene  of  life.  Ideal  literature,  greatly 
inclusive  of  life  and  character,  holds  the  first  place  in 
fiction  as  in  poetry. 

The  English  novel  of  itself  yields  some  guidance.  It 
is,  perhaps,  the  purest  growth  of  English  literary  genius, 
that  in  which  native  power  is  most  unmixed  with  foreign 
elements.  English  poetic  genius  is  largely  indebted  to 
foreign  grafts,  to  the  continental  mediums  of  the  old 
tradition  and  to  that  tradition  in  its  antique  sources. 
English  poetry  cannot  be  very  intelligently  understood 
except  by  a  classically  educated  mind,  and  its  creators 
directly  or  indirectly  were  bred  of  the  South  of  Europe 
and  heirs  of  the  Mediterranean.  With  English  fiction  the 
case  is  different.  Character  has  always  held  a  favored 
place  in  the  minds  of  the  English;  whether  in  the  form  of 
practical  action  or  of  moral  precept  a  prime  value  has 
been  placed  upon  it;  the  English  mind  is  prepossessed 
with  the  moral  meaning  of  life,  with  its  practical  issues, 
with  its  ethical  reality.  Reality,  too,  in  its  obvious  forms 
of  fact,  event,  fixed  trait,  is  a  large  ingredient  in  the  in- 
terest the  English  take  in  life;  they  are  attached  to  the 
soil  and  to  the  characters  that  grow  out  of  it,  to  human 
nature  as  modified  and  modeled  by  it,  to  the  strength  of 
life  that  thrives  there.  English  life,  in  the  home-bred, 
high-flavored,  obvious  form  was  the  subject  of  the  Eng- 


FICTION  93 

lish  novel  from  the  first  moment  of  its  greatness,  and  a 
predominant  interest  in  character  controlled  it.  The  tra- 
dition of  Fielding  was  never  lost;  the  handling  of  genuine 
human  events  for  the  display  of  character,  and  both  in 
close  neighborhood  with  the  soil,  is  characteristic  of  the 
English  novel  in  the  great  line  of  its  development.  It 
followed  from  this  that  the  novel  entered  easily  into  na- 
tional literature.  What  makes  literature  national  is  its 
embodiment  of  the  national  tradition  and  the  national 
morality;  it  is  plain  at  a  glance  that  Fielding  and  Scott 
accomplished  this  with  great  power,  and  Dickens  and 
Thackeray  likewise  in  their  turn;  in  these  four  writers 
their  countrymen  are  presented  with  extraordinary  fidelity 
in  the  scene  of  their  life  and  with  reality.  It  is  the  life 
of  England  and  of  Englishmen,  of  Scotland  and  of  Scotch- 
men, that  is  read  in  these  books;  and  the  minor  novelists, 
Goldsmith,  Smollett,  Sterne,  Austen,  Bronte,  supplement 
the  great  masters  with  a  picture  of  life  similarly  English- 
bred.  The  work  of  George  Eliot  and  Kingsley  is  most 
interesting,  and  is  either  great  or  approaches  greatness, 
in  proportion  as  it  adds  to  the  stream  of  national  tradi- 
tion, in  the  scene  of  English  life,  and  of  national  morality, 
in  the  display  of  manners  and  ideals  of  plain  English 
mold.  The  reader  who  is  seeking  the  substance  of  life  in 
the  novel  should  keep  close  to  this  great  tradition  of 
English  life  in  the  books  where  it  is  most  vividly  put  forth 
and  is  felt  to  be  most  national.  A  national  literature  is 
always  great,  because  it  contains  the  ideal  form  of  the 
nation  reminiscently  beheld.  Those  English  novels  have 
the  most  worth  in  which  life  and  character  are  most 
nationally  portrayed  with  breadth,  reality,  and  affection; 
they  are  found  in  the  line  of  the  standard  tradition. 
What  makes  literature  standard  is  that  it  permanently 


94  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

embodies  the  national  consciousness  in  its  historic  forms 
as  each  ceases  to  be  contemporary  and  passes  into 
memory.  Standard  literature  is  consequently  always 
partially  out-of-date  and  falls  to  the  scholar  or  to  the 
reader  who  desires  to  realize  the  past.  It  often  happens, 
however,  that  standard  literature  long  retains  a  living  re- 
lation to  successive  generations  by  virtue  of  its  containing 
some  element  that  does  not  grow  out  of  date,  and  litera- 
ture is  great  in  proportion  as  it  contains  this  principle  of 
life.  Achilles  and  Ulysses,  for  example,  continued  through 
ages  to  be  real  and  nigh  to  the  Greek  consciousness  of 
life.  The  novel,  inasmuch  as  it  is  more  mixed  with  con- 
temporary and  transitory  elements  than  poetry,  passes 
more  quickly  into  the  past;  but  the  standard  English 
novel  still  retains  many  characters  and  much  action  that 
are  as  contemporary  to  our  minds  as  when  the  story  was 
originally  written.  A  man,  nevertheless,  must  live  and 
die  with  his  own  generation,  and  the  literature  that  is 
really  out  of  date  need  not  greatly  concern  him,  except 
so  far  as  he  desires  to  be  informed  about  the  past  of  his 
people  and  their  writers. 

A  second  guiding  principle  in  the  field  of  the  novel  may 
be  found  in  the  power  it  has  to  expand  the  mind  and  in- 
terests of  the  reader.  The  office  of  the  novel  in  expanding 
knowledge,  in  making  the  world  known  to  itself  in  all 
parts,  has  been  touched  on;  in  the  individual  case  the 
reader  may  be  guided  in  his  choice  in  proportion  as  he 
finds  the  material  and  power  of  the  writer  working  this 
effect  in  himself.  This  expansion  of  the  mind  is  most 
valuable  when  it  takes  place  in  the  world  of  humanity  at 
large  so  that  the  reader  becomes  better  informed  with 
regard  to  the  common  lot  of  mankind  and  is  thereby  made 
more  humane,  more  fully  man,  more  sympathetically  at 


FICTION  95 

one  with  his  fellows.  Perhaps  the  greatest  humanitarian 
novel  is  Victor  Hugo's  "Les  Miserables,"  both  by  the 
scope  of  its  scene  and  action  and  by  the  ideas  that  shape 
and  create  the  story.  In  a  broader  way  the  Russian  novel, 
taken  in  its  whole  career,  gives  a  revelation  of  the  lot  of 
mankind  which  is  to  the  reader  like  the  discovery  of  a 
new  land,  and  in  connection  with  it  stand  humanitarian 
ideas  closely  joined;  the  expansion  both  of  knowledge 
and  of  sympathy  is  most  serviceable  and  the  literary  type 
of  the  Russian  novel  is  itself  high  both  for  plot,  character 
and  passion.  The  power  of  expansion,  however,  does  not 
reside  only  in  foreign  novels  or  depend  on  a  new  and  dis- 
tant scene  or  a  strange  mode  of  life.  Any  great  experi- 
ence expands  the  mind;  and,  in  a  secondary  way,  to  read 
of  a  great  experience  has  the  same  effect.  The  experience 
of  a  great  love  is  the  most  transforming  power  in  life,  and 
hence  no  type  of  story  is  so  constant,  so  sure  of  interest, 
or  so  valuable.  This  is  the  fascination  of  "Lorna  Doone," 
and  of  many  another  tale.  The  experience  of  a  great  re- 
pentance makes  the  attraction  of  "The  Scarlet  Letter." 
The  great  novels  of  tragedy  and  passion  have  their  power 
over  the  reader  in  the  sense  of  this  experience,  which  he 
lives  through  in  imagination  and  takes  partially  at  least 
to  himself.  If  the  mind  expands  either  in  information  and 
sympathy,  leading  to  a  fuller  comprehension  of  the  com- 
mon lot,  or  in  realizing  the  great  experiences  of  life,  the 
reader  may  well  be  assured  that  he  is  in  a  right  path. 

A  third  working  principle,  and  one  of  the  widest  ap- 
plication, is  recreation.  Fiction  is  the  home  of  mental 
leisure;  and  nowhere  is^the  fundamental  aim  of  literature, 
the  will  to  please,  pursued  so  purely  and  with  such  unre- 
stricted freedom.  Men  take  their  recreation  variously, 
and  no  rule  can  be  laid  down.    Some  enjoy  reading  about 


96  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

themselves  and  their  neighbors  and  seeing  life  as  they 
know  it,  in  a  book.  The  more  common  way  is  to  desire  a 
change  of  scene,  a  new  environment  and  a  tale  that  shall 
take  us  out  of  ourselves.  The  presence  of  excitement  in 
the  story  is  the  surest  means  of  causing  absorption  of  in- 
terest and  securing  that  release  from  the  every-day  world 
which  is  sought,  a  break  in  the  monotony  of  life  and 
affairs,  or  rest  from  its  overtaxing  business;  and  in  the 
present  time  often  the  wish  is  to  escape  from  the  world 
of  thought.  The  great  hold  of  the  novel  of  adventure  on 
the  public  is  due  to  such  desires;  it  is  action  that 
is  wanted,  or  character  which  puts  all  of  itself  into  deeds 
and  is  scarcely  known  except  as  it  acts.  This  is  the 
simplest  form  of  fiction  and  makes  the  least  demand  upon 
the  reader,  while  it  allows  him  to  lead  in  fancy  and  sym- 
pathy a  life  which  is  stirring  and  at  the  same  time  irre- 
sponsible. The  novel  of  adventure  holds  the  first  place 
in  the  literature  of  recreation  and  is  to  be  found  wherever 
tales  are  told.  It  has  the  advantage  of  always  having  a 
story  to  tell;  it  blends  with  the  great  events  and  famous 
personages  of  history  and  also  with  the  unknown  on  sea 
and  land,  with  lonely  peril,  with  villainy  of  every  kind;  it 
taxes  human  energy  and  resource  to  the  utmost,  and 
appeals  to  that  love  of  the  heroic  which  is  the  most  deep- 
seated  of  the  noble  instincts  of  man.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  it  should  always  have  been  the  prime  element  in 
fiction  as  it  was  in  poetry,  the  literature  of  the  deed  done 
in  danger,  whether  for  war  or  love  or  in  the  contest  with 
the  elements,  the  story  of  man^s  gallantry,  trial  and  res- 
cue in  every  race  and  under  every  sky.  To  read  it  is  to 
return  to  the  youth  of  the  world  and  of  life,  to  dip  in 
action  and  to  forget,  for  the  dream  of  action  is  the  most 
complete  of  dreams;  it  "covers  one  all  over,  thoughts  and 


FICTION  97 

all,"  like  Sancho's  sleep.  Such  romance,  too,  recreates 
the  vigor  and  cheerfulness  of  life,  as  it  stimulates  youthful 
energy;  it  is  refreshing,  not  merely  by  change,  but  by  its 
electrical  charging  of  the  original  instincts  of  man  and  the 
excitement  it  imparts  to  them.  Romance  believes  in  man 
and  in  life,  as  youth  does,  and  develops  positive  power, 
assertion  and  daring  in  the  temperament  that  it  imbues; 
it  repairs  the  waste  of  faith  and  hope  and  resolution,  as 
poetry  does,  and  gives  back  to  instinct  what  thought  has 
taken  from  its  power.  The  war  sagas  of  old,  the  min- 
strel's tale  in  the  baron's  hall,  the  episodes  and  cycles  of 
chivalry  were  such  a  reinvigoration  in  primitive  days,  and 
modern  romance  in  its  infinitely  varied  forms,  from  peril 
by  sea  and  land  to  peril  for  a  faith,  a  crown  or  a  cause, 
is  the  lineal  descendant  of  these  and  serves  in  modern  life 
a  like  need.  It  is  that  part  of  Jiterature  where  impulse 
has  the  largest  play;  and  it  gives  freedom  of  movement 
and  a  life  in  the  imagination  to  impulses  that  life  confines; 
it  enlarges  life  and  provides  that  supplement  to  reality 
which  human  nature  requires  for  its  wholeness.  The  in- 
exhaustible demand  for  it  shows  that  it  is  grounded  on 
a  real  need. 

The  tale  of  adventure,  in  every  period  of  literature, 
has  been  thus  highly  prized  as  a  form  of  recreation.  It 
blends  naturally  with  the  tale  of  mystery,  or  the  wonder- 
tale,  which  perhaps  holds  the  second  place  in  general 
favor.  In  its  form  of  pure  marvel  the  treasure-house  of 
this  sort  of  literature  is  "The  Arabian  Nights."  They 
suggest  childhood  to  us,  and  the  childhood  of  a  race  also, 
but  the  experience  of  a  mature  and  old  race  is  curiously 
mixed  with  the  picture  of  life  they  represent.  English 
literature  is  rich  in  translations,  adaptations  and  imita- 
tions of  this  oriental  play  of  fancy,  actual  manners  and 


98  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

wisdom;  they  make  an  interesting  episode  in  the  history 
of  the  English  genius  so  eagerly  assimilative  of  every 
foreign  strain  and  closely  in  contact  with  the  Oriental 
people.  Pure  marvel,  however,  is  too  baseless  a  fabric 
for  the  English  temperament,  and  the  tale  of  mystery  in 
the  history  of  the  English  novel  has  preferred  the  form 
in  which  the  mystery  is  solved.  The  episode  of  what  is 
called  the  Gothic  romance,  Walpole's  "Castle  of  Otranto," 
with  its  successors  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  Monk  Lewis, 
introduced  the  wonder-story  that  is  solved,  the  super- 
natural there  being  explained  by  mechanical  means;  it 
was  followed  by  the  mystery  tales  of  Poe,  in  the  next 
generation,  and  the  detective  tale,  but  the  explanation  in- 
volved in  these  is  a  weakness  in  interest.  The  tales  are 
discredited  by  the  completeness  of  the  explanation,  and 
it  is  only  by  the  subtlety  of  the  reasoning  involved  and 
something  abnormal  in  the  circumstances,  as  in  "The 
Murders  in  the  Rue  Morgue,"  that  they  maintain  a  last- 
ing life  in  literature.  Mystery,  as  an  enduring  theme, 
prefers  its  old  lairs;  in  the  cruder  form  it  requires  the 
Rosicrucians,  the  secret  orders  and  problems,  the  theoso- 
phists  of  India,  and  leaves  something  still  doubtful  and 
inscrutable  at  the  end;  or  it  contents  itself  with  the  in- 
terest of  a  well-concealed  plot  which  finally  discloses  its 
secret  to  the  relief  of  the  mind.  Science  and  the  scientific 
spirit  killed  the  wonder-story  in  its  supernatural  and 
merely  marvelous  form,  its  fairy  and  spirit  play;  nor  has 
scientific  marvel  in  becoming  itself  the  subject  of  imagi- 
nation at  all  filled  the  old  place  which  it  emptied  of  mean- 
ing. The  sea  is  the  natural  abode  of  mystery,  but  the 
sea-novel  has  not  been  especially  successful  in  retaining 
that  element  from  the  days  before  the  oceans  were  known 
and  charted.    Mystery  is,  however,  so  inherent  in  life, 


FICTION  99 

and  it  is  so  fascinating  to  men,  that  its  older  forms  will 
long  retain  imaginative  power,  and  in  the  greatest  novels 
in  which  it  takes  on  a  moral  form,  the  mystery  of  man's 
life  and  fates,  it  will  remain  imbedded,  not  merely  as  an 
artifice  of  the  plot,  but  as  the  substance  of  the  meaning. 
Mystery  and  romance  do  not  exhaust  the  interest  of 
the  novel  of  recreation,  which  has  infinite  variety;  but 
they  sufficiently  illustrate  its  nature.  A  third  sort  should, 
perhaps,  be  noticed;  the  tale  which  by  its  representation 
of  quiet  life  and  humble  folks,  like  the  pastoral  idyl  of 
old  days,  acts  rather  as  an  anodyne.  Such  stories  of 
simplicity  are  a  perennial  product  in  all  lands  and  times, 
often  wrought  with  high  and  enduring  art.  The  old  coun- 
try life  of  England  and  America  affords  them  as  a  product 
of  the  native  soil,  and  in  the  fiction  of  the  south  of  Europe 
they  make  one  of  the  purest  elements  of  charm,  as  in  the 
Sicilian  and  Sardinian  novel  of  the  day.  The  life  of 
people  near  the  soil,  truly  told  in  its  human  interests, 
secures  almost  without  effort  some  of  the  best  results  of 
art  by  virtue  of  what  it  excludes  and  the  simplicity  and 
truth  of  what  remains.  Reality,  such  as  this,  mystery 
and  romance  are,  perhaps,  the  most  important  forms  of 
recreation  afforded  by  the  novel;  they  are,  at  least,  char- 
acteristic forms.  A  long  catalogue  would  not  exhaust  the 
varieties  of  interest  here  to  be  found;  the  novel,  as  was. 
said,  is  the  epitome  of  modern  life.  At  last  the  question 
of  approach  to  the  novel  is  one  of  individual  liking,  tem- 
perament, experience,  inclination  and  necessities;  seri- 
ously read,  the  novel  is  a  study  of  life;  practically  it  is 
a  mode  of  recreation,  entertainment,  amusement.  Desul- 
tory reading  is  one  of  the  most  useful  as  well  as  pleasur- 
able of  literary  pursuits;  and  nowhere  is  it  more  in  place 
or  more  fruitful  than  in  the  novel. 


CHAPTER  VI 

OTHER  PROSE  FORMS 

The  principal  supports  of  imaginative  literature,  as  has 
been  indicated,  are  biography,  history  and  philosophy. 
In  pure  imagination  ideality  is  the  characteristic  product 
of  the  art,  and  measures  its  power  and  success;  next  to 
it  in  literary  interest  is  personality.  Those  books,  of 
whatever  sort,  that  contain  personality  in  interesting 
forms  best  illustrate  life  and  are  most  attractive  and  en- 
during in  minor  literature.  Biography  succeeds  best  when 
the  subject  of  it  and  the  circumstances  of  his  life  and  the 
events  of  his  career  are  described  with  the  closest  ap- 
proximation to  imaginative  methods,  so  that  he  lives  and 
is  seen  with  the  clear  vitality  of  characters  in  a  novel.  It 
was  Bosweirs  power  to  render  character  by  dialogue  and 
anecdote  that  made  his  life  of  Johnson  a  classic  biography. 
There  are  few  lives  that  even  approach  that  work  as  a 
truthful  picture  of  a  man  in  his  peculiar  individuality. 
Autobiography  is  generally  a  surer  way  to  vivid  person- 
ality, and  the  great  autobiographies  are  sincere  or  un- 
conscious confessions;  of  the  first  type  Franklin  gave  a 
memorable  example,  and  of  the  second  Pepys'  "Diary" 
is  the  immortal  instance.  Letters  are  an  autobiographic 
form  essentially,  but  they  usually  give  a  picture  of  the 
society  of  the  writer,  and  are  often  as  interesting  for  what 
they  contain  of  the  age  as  for  what  they  reveal  of  the 
person.  Walpole^s  letters  are  such  a  view  of  a  period  of 
English  culture;  and  the  letters  of  Gray,  Cowper  and 

lOO 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  icyi 

Fitzgerald,  each  in  his  own  social  group,  have  such  a 
double  value,  social  and  personal.  The  letters  of  Byron 
and  of  Shelley  both  contain  more  of  the  personality  of 
those  poets  than  has  ever  passed  into  any  of  the  many 
lives  of  each  of  them.  In  biography,  generally,  which 
avails  itself  of  letters,  as  one  element  of  the  story,  the 
reader  is  content  with  a  diluted  personality,  and  finds  the 
subject  set  forth,  not  directly,  but  by  narrative  and  criti- 
cism, with  reflected  lights  from  the  environment  and 
social  group  of  the  subject;  but  whatever  is  human,  if  it 
be  sincerely  described,  is  so  surely  interesting  that  bi- 
ography has  long  been  a  large  part  of  secondary  literature. 
It  has  the  advantage  to  some  minds,  less  capable  of  seizing 
truth  abstractly  in  ideal  persons,  of  bringing  to  them 
something  that  is  known  to  be  real.  It  has  the  felicity 
also  of  illustrating  the  richness  of  life  in  refined  or 
capable  natures,  and  of  the  excellence  of  men  and  women 
in  careers  perhaps  not  of  remarkable  distinction,  but  of 
great  usefulness  and  noble  in  service.  That  biography 
which  is  rather  a  portion  of  history  and  sets  forth  sur- 
passing character,  such  as  Plutarch's  "Lives,"  is  not  far 
below  heroic  poetry  in  its  power  of  ideal  type;  and  the 
far  larger  portion  which  relates  the  lives  of  men  notable 
for  their  experience,  for  individual  talent  or  social  service 
or  for  romance  in  their  fortunes,  is  not  far  removed  from 
character  in  fiction.  Choice  in  biography  is  commonly 
a  matter  of  accident,  an  affair  of  private  preference  or 
interest;  but  its  chief  use  is  to  enrich  the  reader's  sense 
of  character  and  the  value  he  places  on  human  qualities, 
on  personality.  Biography,  too,  unlocks  the  sympathies, 
and  often  exercises  an  intimate  and  direct  awakening  in- 
fluence, especially  upon  practical  natures  less  open  to 
ideal  enthusiasm. 


102   ;     ;  ..Af'P;RECIATION   OF   LITEBIATURE 

Those  sporadic  books  which  obtain  the  place  of  classics 
in  literature  often  seem  to  owe  their  vogue  to  a  biographi- 
cal element  in  them,  in  so  far  as  they  are  representative 
of  the  peculiar  mind  and  tastes  of  their  authors.  The 
type  is  Burton's  "Anatomy  of  Melancholy,"  Walton's 
"Complete  Angler"  or  Browne's  "Religio  Medici,"  or  the 
writings  of  the  modern  American  "Autocrat,"  Dr.  Holmes. 
They  contain  a  miscellany  of  matters,  interesting  in  them- 
selves, but  which  have  passed  through  the  individuality 
of  their  authors  and  acquired  a  certain  human  unity  and 
new  significance  from  a  living  contact,  even  when  the 
matter  itself  is  antiquarian  or  remote,  or  merely  singular 
in  a  humoristic  sense.  They  give  the  mind  of  the  man, 
and  are  distinguished  by  originality  such  as  has  its  only 
source  in  character.  Enjoyment  of  them  depends  on  some 
special  aptitude  of  the  reader  for  appreciating  the  kind  of 
mind  involved,  and  some  intellectual  sympathy  with  the 
matter  which  takes  its  stamp.  To  give  the  mind  of  the 
man  is  a  distinction  for  any  book.  It  is  of  more  interest 
when  the  mind  is  typical,  as  Wellington's  letters  give 
the  mind  of  the  soldier.  When  the  mind  takes  on  great 
ideal  breadth,  the  book  becomes  a  classic  of  the  world, 
as  in  Thomas  a  Kempis'  "Imitatio  Christi"  or  St.  Francis' 
"Fioretti,"  which  yield  the  mind  of  the  Christian  and  of 
the  saint.  It  often  happens  that  biography,  without  being 
widely  inclusive  of  a  human  type,  nevertheless  reflects 
human  experience  in  narrower  bands  and  gives  the  spec- 
trum of  special  moods  of  human  nature.  The  lives  of  the 
saints,  and  religious  biography  in  general,  owe  much  of 
their  interest  to  this  reflection  of  private  experience,  and 
more  brilliant  or  pure  expression  of  moods  already  par- 
tially known  or  latent  in  the  reader;  as  heroic  lives  appeal 
to  instinctive  ambition  and  desire  for  adventure,  these 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  103 

appeal  to  the  instinctive  piety  of  men.  To  give  the  life 
in  a  person  is  the  quality  in  these  books  which  makes 
them  commanding.  Wherever  the  subject  is  taken  up, 
it  is  personality  that  is  the  secret  of  all  such  literature. 
It  is  sometimes  represented  that  personality,  especially 
in  the  autobiographic  sense,  is  modern  in  literature,  and 
specifically  that  it  was  a  discovery  of  Petrarch;  but, 
though  the  principle  has  had  a  great  career  in  modern 
writing,  so  broad  a  statement  must  be  doubtfully  re- 
garded. Lives  were  a  favorite  form  of  ancient  literature. 
The  ''Commentaries''  of  Csesar  are  not  so  different  from 
Wellington's  "Correspondence,"  the  "Meditations"  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  from  the  "Imitation  of  Christ,"  the 
"Confessions"  of  St.  Augustine  from  those  of  Rousseau; 
Pythagoras  and  Epicurus  were  men  who  made  an  im- 
mense personal  impression,  and  the  power  of  a  person- 
ality as  well  as  of  a  doctrine  made  the  victory  of 
Christianity  over  the  third  part  of  the  world.  In  the 
centuries  of  Roman  greatness  just  before  and  after  Christ 
personality  was  a  main  object  of  literary  attention,  and 
probably  interest  in  it  did  not  vary  much  from  that  felt 
in  the  Renaissance,  though  the  record  of  it  was  seldom 
put  forth  autobiographically.  It  is  probably  an  error  to 
think  that  any  form  of  individualism  was  unknown  to  the 
Roman  world,  and  our  biographic  records  of  antiquity 
are  on  the  whole  rich.  We  know  nearly  as  much,  for  ex- 
ample, of  Sophocles  as  of  Shakespeare. 

Travel,  which  is  popularly  so  fascinating  a  branch  of 
literature,  is  a  near  neighbor  to  biography.  The  character 
of  the  traveler  and  the  human  interest  of  his  journey  make 
a  large  part  of  the  charm  of  what  he  tells.  Everything 
is  seen  through  his  eyes,  his  curiosity  controls  the  view, 
his  pursuits  confine  the  attention.    Herodotus  was  one  of 


104  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

the  best  of  travelers,  as  eager  to  know  men  and  manners 
as  Ulysses,  full  of  the  romance  of  things  freshly  known; 
a  more  interesting  book  was  hardly  handed  down  by 
antiquity.  Travel  attracts  the  reader  mainly  by  the  un- 
known, and  perhaps  the  best  of  travel  is  now  historic; 
for  the  story  of  travel  has  always  attended  the  story  of 
national  greatness.  The  mass  of  it  is  that  which  was 
written  in  the  years  of  the  discovery  of  the  world  beyond 
Europe  on  all  its  horizons,  and  for  English  readers  is  to 
be  found  in  the  great  collections  of  Hakluyt  and  others. 
In  a  later  time  the  story  of  exploration  in  Africa  and  Asia 
and  about  the  Pole  contains  its  most  vivid  chapters  and 
blends  the  pleasure  of  new  knowledge  with  individual 
adventure.  A  finer  literary  quality,  however,  belongs  to 
writers  who  are  not  explorers,  but  who  in  romantic  lands 
or  strange  environments  feel  and  render  the  local  color 
and  incident  and  novelty  of  what  is  before  them,  and, 
in  a  literary  sense,  are  masters  of  atmosphere.  The 
French  are  good  travelers,  and  none  are  more  expert  in 
modern  days  in  giving  atmosphere.  The  literary  treat- 
ment of  travel  is  more  a  French  than  an  English  art. 
Kinglake's  long  famous  "Eothen"  was  an  excellent  narra- 
tive, strong  and  vivid  in  rendering  the  eastern  scene  and 
its  figures,  but  he  had  neither  the  subtilty  nor  the  sym- 
pathy of  the  southern  temperament,  and  none  of  the 
imaginativeness  of  the  French  masters  such  as  Loti. 
Irving  is,  perhaps,  the  best  of  our  travelers  of  the  literary 
habit,  who  use  their  material  with  an  eye  to  its  effect  as 
an  intimate  imaginative  portrayal.  His  writings  on 
special  topics  realize  the  romance  of  the  land,  the  figures 
of  knight  and  Moor  the  life  of  an  historically  enchanted 
soil;  and  even  in  England  he  is  still  the  best  of  American 
travelers  for  the  sentiment  of  the  scene.    Literary  travel 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  105 

is,  however,  hardly  a  considerable  portion  of  the  field.  It 
is  rather  in  simpler  narratives,  that  detail  the  truth  of 
the  country  districts  of  Europe  or  the  adventure  of  some 
long  ride  in  the  East  or  the  South,  that  most  pleasure  is 
to  be  found;  and  though  past  voyages  were  the  novel  of 
travel,  and  their  literature  was  immense,  it  is  seldom  now 
that  any  voyage  is  interesting  except  it  be  scientific. 
Anthropology  and  archeology,  in  their  attempt  to  realize 
primitive  life  and  past  epochal  civilization,  embody  a 
large  element  of  travel  in  very  interesting  forms.  The 
reader  who  pursues  any  of  these  lines,  scientific,  literary 
or  adventurous,  enlarges  his  horizon  materially,  and  few 
kinds  of  reading  are  more  useful.  To  know  ourselves 
better  through  literature  is  not  difficult,  but  to  know  what 
is  not  ourselves  is  an  exceedingly  hard  task.  It  is  safer 
to  distrust  one's  impression  of  the  foreign,  the  distant  and 
the  long  past,  however  exact  it  may  appear;  but  though 
the  result  may  be  imperfect,  there  is  no  better  means  than 
by  intelligent  and  sympathetic  books  of  travel  to  free  the 
mind  from  the  intolerance  that  belongs  to  it  by  nature 
and  to  lessen  the  narrowness  inherent  in  race,  faith  and 
habit. 

History  is  a  province  by  itself,  and  it  has  been  much 
contested  whether  it  should  be  regarded  more  as  science 
or  more  as  literature.  A  large  part  of  history,  as  it  has 
been  written  in  the  past,  nevertheless,  is  of  literary 
quality,  and  many  historians  would  have  been  tenacious 
of  its  literary  rights.  It  is  clear  from  the  discussion  that 
history  with  a  literary  intention  has  certain  traits  of  its 
own.  The  question  here  is  only  what  history  should  be 
preferred  by  readers  whose  primary  interest  is  in  litera- 
ture. It  is  not  a  matter  merely  of  rhetorical  style  or  the 
mode  of  presentation,  but  of  the  ends  sought  and  the 


io6  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

methods  of  construction  followed  by  the  historian.  He 
endeavors  to  reproduce  the  past;  but  as  the  story  is 
passed  through  his  personality,  it  suffers  the  modification 
due  to  that  medium  and  is  recreated  in  certain  lines  of 
choice,  insight  and  judgment  belonging  to  the  historian; 
it  wears  the  colors  of  his  mind.  Thucydides,  who  first 
undertook  to  write  history  philosophically,  presented  it 
in  a  highly  imaginative  form,  by  persons  and  events, 
dramatically.  Macaulay,  the  most  absorbing  modern 
narrator,  makes  of  his  work  an  impassioned  plea  with  the 
conscious  resources  of  an  ancient  orator,  picturing  the 
scene,  making  the  persons  alive,  appealing  to  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  reader.  In  Robertson,  Prescott  and 
Motley,  history  is  a  stately  procession.  The  works  of 
the  more  recent  historians  of  the  scientific  school,  how- 
ever more  useful  they  may  be  in  the  field  of  knowledge, 
do  not  enter  popularly  into  literature;  they  may  clarify 
the  past  with  which  they  deal,  but  they  do  not  perma- 
nently embody  national  tradition  and  morality  ideally  to 
anything  like  the  same  degree  or  in  the  same  way  as  the 
older  histories;  they  lack  the  imaginative  power,  and  are 
hence  ineffective  in  literature.  The  reader  who  makes  a 
literary  demand  desires  primarily  the  human  truth  of 
history,  its  course  of  great  events  shown  through  famous 
characters,  or  its  picture  of  the  life  of  cities  and  of  the 
common  lot  given  in  their  human  phenomena;  he  asks 
for  the  old  spectacle  of  men,  or  masses  of  men,  doing  and 
suffering;  history  has  a  literary  interest  for  him  in  pro- 
portion as  it  becomes  epical.  Other  kinds  of  history  may 
be  more  exact  and  detailed,  and  enter  upon  parts  of  the 
field  that  dramatic  and  picturesque  history  ignores;  but 
they  have  less  human  truth,  or  present  truth  in  a  less 
human  form.    Thucydides,  Livy  and  Tacitus  present  this 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  107 

truth  in  an  enduring  form,  and  no  literature  is  more  im- 
perishable in  interest;  the  chroniclers  of  the  Crusades, 
such  as  Froissart,  composed  vivid  pictures  of  events  which 
they  witnessed  that  are  incomparable  portrayals  of  char- 
acter, scene  and  the  pageantry  of  stirring  life  in  their 
day;  and  the  historians  who  have  been  famous  in  English 
follow  this  literary  tradition.  Gibbon  was,  perhaps,  the 
greatest  of  them  by  virtue  of  the  magnitude  of  his  work, 
"The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  It  is  a 
great  history,  and  though  it  may  be  corrected  and  sup- 
plemented by  the  researches  of  scholarship,  all  such  labor 
is  of  the  nature  of  a  comment  on  the  text;  the  work  itself 
will  never  be  supplanted.  In  proportion  as  the  literary 
tradition  is  departed  from,  history  relegates  itself  to  the 
field  of  scholarship  and  becomes  a  department  of  scien- 
tific knowledge  rather  than  of  literature. 

Philosophy  in  the  sense  of  metaphysics  plays  but  a 
small  part  in  literary  education,  though  in  the  compre- 
hension of  the  final  thought  of  Wordsworth,  Shelley  and 
Tennyson  some  tincture  of  philosophy,  such  as  these 
poets  themselves  had,  is  required,  and  it  is  convenient  in 
other  minor  parts  of  English  poetry.  Some  acquaintance 
with  Platonic  conceptions  is  especially  to  be  desired,  be- 
cause they  are  a  part  of  the  tradition  of  English  poetry. 
But  the  philosophy  which  most  supports  imaginative 
literature  is  rather  what  is  sometimes  called  wisdom- 
literature,  proverbial  sentences  and,  in  general,  ethical 
thought,  playing  about  the  nature  of  action,  conscience, 
responsibility,  the  frailties  of  human  nature,  the  issues  of 
right  and  wrong,  the  morality  of  life.  Such  knowledge 
in  English  has  mainly  flowed  from  the  Bible  and  passes 
current  in  the  general  mind  without  much  distinction  of 
literary  stamp.     Franklin  and  Emerson,  however,  are 


io8  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

illustrious  American  names  in  this  field,  and  in  English 
the  type  is  found  in  Bacon's  "Essays."  Greater  books 
than  these  are  the  "Imitation  of  Christ''  and  Marcus 
Aurelius'  "Meditations,"  already  mentioned,  and  on  a 
lower  plane  Montaigne's  "Essays."  The  French,  unlike 
the  English,  are  peculiarly  rich  in  books  of  maxims, 
pensees  and  characters,  and  can  show  a  long  series  of 
brilliant  and  talented  masters  in  worldly  and  moral  dicta 
which  make  a  unique  and  characteristic  part  of  their 
classic  literature.  The  sense  of  the  weight  of  meaning  in 
the  phrase,  such  as  Burke  was  a  master  of,  and  of  the 
salt  of  truth,  is  one  of  the  last  fruits  of  literary  study 
and  requires  maturity  both  of  mind  and  of  experience. 
Such  literature  in  an  express  form  is  consequently  rarely 
sought  by  the  reader  for  its  own  sake  and  is  commonly 
forced  on  him  by  its  fame  rather  than  by  his  original 
liking  in  the  first  instance.  Ethical  knowledge  is  generally 
implicit  in  the  reader's  character  and  prejudices,  in  his 
instinctive  judgment,  and  plays  its  part  in  literary  ap- 
preciation involuntarily  and  without  his  being  aware  of 
it  except  in  its  results. 

The  essay  opens  a  province  of  literature  almost  as 
broad  and  varied  as  that  of  the  novel.  It  may  have  any 
subject  and  treat  it  to  any  end.  The  familiar  essay  in 
particular  offers  the  most  free  play  to  the  personality  of 
the  author,  who  shows  his  own  tastes  in  it  with  natural- 
ness and  brings  forward  whatever  of  interest  he  has 
found.  It  also  corresponds  to  the  greatest  disengagement 
of  the  reader's  mind.  One  tires  of  long  and  serious  pur- 
suit and  studious  zeal  in  any  subject;  here  is  the  oppor- 
tunity for  wandering,  for  the  avocations  of  literature,  for 
diversion.  In  the  essay  the  author  gives  his  companion- 
ship to  the  reader  on  a  footing  of  friendly  mutual  interest 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  109 

in  some  passing  matters  as  in  conversation.  The  familiar 
essay  is  best  when  it  approaches  this  form  of  talk  with 
the  reader,  and  solicits  him  without  emphasis  or  resist- 
ance to  a  brief  partnership  in  social  pleasure.  The  master 
of  the  mode,  it  would  be  commonly  allowed,  is  Charles 
Lamb.  In  ^^Elia"  there  is  the  first  requisite,  a  richly 
human  personality.  Lamb  was  a  poet  and  a  humorist, 
and  thus  yoked  two  elements  of  the  most  delightful  play 
of  life,  sentiment  and  fun,  in  a  companionable  nature. 
He  was  fond  of  humanity  and  saw  the  spectacle  of  its 
daily  affairs  and  its  ordinary  guises  with  sympathy  that 
passes  from  laughter  to  pathos  almost  without  knowing 
the  change,  so  absorbing  and  real  is  the  human  aspect  of 
it  all;  he  is  full  of  reminiscences,  of  life  lived  in  his  own 
neighborhood,  even  in  his  own  home,  and  gives  his  reflec- 
tions and  anecdotes  with  intimacy;  he  takes  the  reader 
into  his  life  and  gives  him  his  confidence.  Even  in  the 
purely  literary  parts  of  his  work  he  never  loses  the  sense 
that  the  poets  and  the  old  writers  of  golden  prose  are  a 
part  of  himself,  and  to  the  reader  they  become  phases  of 
Lamb's  personality  and  are  more  valued  for  showing  his 
likings  than  for  their  private  worth.  In  every  essay  of 
"Elia,"  whatever  the  topic,  it  is  the  company  of  Lamb 
that  makes  the  pleasure.  He  escapes  the  formality  of 
autobiography  and  the  f  ragmen  tar  iness  of  letters,  but 
keeps  the  intimate  charm  of  the  one  and  the  discursive 
happiness  of  the  other;  as  one  reads,  it  seems  the  talk  of 
a  man  that  is  not  quite  soliloquy  nor  yet  is  it  conversation, 
and  it  gives  more  than  thought  and  anecdote,  —  it  gives 
the  presence  of  the  man,  his  idiosyncrasy;  the  tones  of  his 
voice  are  felt  in  the  cadences  of  the  style,  and  the  moods 
of  his  eyes  in  the  sly  humors  and  pathetic  stops  of  the 
page.    It  is  not  strange  that  Lamb  is  so  much  beloved 


no  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

since  he  has  this  power  of  silent  familiarity  in  so  pene- 
trating and  agreeable  a  way,  and  his  nature  was  itself  so 
refined  and  touched  with  human  friendliness.  It  is  the 
prime  quality  of  the  familiar  essayist  to  be  able  to  give 
himself  to  the  reader  thus  and  to  be  received.  In  no 
other  author  is  the  trait  so  clear. 

De  Quincey  illustrates  better  the  miscellaneous  power 
of  the  essay  and  its  capacity  to  turn  itself  to  many  uses 
both  of  instruction  and  entertainment.  His  personality 
is  hardly  less  felt  through  the  living  matter  and  vivid  style 
of  his  work  than  is  Lamb's  in  his  more  kindly  way.  Here, 
too,  the  most  engaging  part  is  autobiographical;  and 
though  much  of  this  is  contained  in  the  larger  works,  in 
particular  "The  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium-Eater," 
yet  this  book  is  really  a  group  of  essays,  and  written  in 
the  manner  of  the  essayist.  Indeed  De  Quincey  knew 
no  other  mode  of  writing,  and  whether  his  subject  was 
metaphysics  or  antiquity  or  a  tale,  he  made  an  essay  of 
it.  His  recollection,  mingled  here  and  there  with  the 
text,  are  of  the  same  quality  as  Lamb's  pictures  of  his 
school  days,  and  the  theme  of  revery,  the  dream  touched 
with  sentiment,  is  common  to  both.  De  Quincey  excels 
by  his  pictorial  power,  and  especially  in  that  fantasy 
which  paints  the  void,  and  in  the  imaginative  symbolism 
which  belongs  more  properly  to  visible  art;  even  when 
it  is  the  mind  that  acts,  it  is  the  eye  that  dreams,  as,  to 
take  the  great  instance,  in  the  almost  hieratic  figures  of 
"The  Three  Ladies  of  Sorrow."  He  excels  also  by  his 
marvelous  verbal  eloquence,  with  its  exquisite  sonorous 
and  melodic  effects,  its  march  of  climax  and  question,  its 
vivid  images  of  figures  and  situations,  while  sound  and 
color  seem  as  much  a  part  of  the  work  as  in  music  or 
painting.     Such  passages  as  are  to  be  found  in  "The 


OTHER   PROSE    FORMS  iii 

Caesars"  or  in  "Joan  of  Arc"  are  hardly  to  be  matched 
elsewhere  for  rich  stylistic  effects,  and  for  the  full  flow 
and  powerful  molding  of  language  to  the  uses  of  the  voice 
which  makes  eloquence.  In  the  miscellaneous  works  of 
De  Quincey  it  is  such  passages  found  at  random,  and  also 
the  dozen  pieces  of  various  kinds  of  interest  in  which 
picturesqueness  is  sustained  throughout,  that  stand  promi- 
nently forth;  but  the  subtlety  of  others,  the  extraordinary 
mental  activity  displayed,  afford  an  interest  hardly  less 
absorbing  to  the  intelligence  than  the  better  known  pieces 
are  to  the  imagination.  De  Quincey  is  becoming,  per- 
haps, a  somewhat  neglected  author,  as  it  is  quite  natural 
that  he  should  be;  but  no  author  better  shows  the  versa- 
tility of  the  essay,  its  adaptability  to  a  variously  stored 
and  widely  curious  mind,  its  supple  response  to  a 
flexible  hand;  and  in  the  modes  of  thought,  color  and 
sound  he  was  a  master  of  intellectual  and  imaginative 
style,  while  the  substance  of  his  work  retains  great  literary 
power.  At  the  end,  however,  he  leaves,  as  the  best  es- 
sayists always  do,  a  personal  impression  and  the  sense  of 
intellectual  companionship. 

The  essayists  pass  quickly  away,  because  their  service 
is  for  the  most  part  a  contemporary  matter,  engaged  in 
observation  and  comment  on  the  ideas,  interests  and 
things  of  the  day.  Carlyle,  like  De  Quincey,  begins  to 
be  disregarded.  Though  he  wrote  history,  the  more  char- 
acteristic expression  of  his  genius  was  in  his  earlier  life 
in  the  form  of  the  essay  and  of  "Sartor  Resartus,"  which 
is  substantially  and  in  manner  the  work  of  an  essayist. 
He  illustrates  the  essay  of  the  Quarterlies  that  is  now  out 
of  date,  with  its  long  Presbyterian  wind,  its  omniscience, 
dogmatism  and  belligerency,  but  also  with  its  high  in- 
tellectual quality  and  sound  moral  fiber.    In  Carlyle  the 


112  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

type  had  most  literary  power.  He  made  it,  after  the  way 
of  the  essayist,  the  channel  of  his  personality,  and  showed 
increasingly  the  eccentric  and  repellant  traits  of  his  tem- 
perament, to  which  the  Teutonism  of  his  style  and  matter 
gave  at  first  a  grotesque  quality.  It  is  likely  that  this 
trait,  which  hindered  his  acceptance  by  the  public  at  the 
start,  already  proves  a  disqualification  in  the  end  as  well, 
and  is  one  reason  for  the  lessening  of  his  vogue.  His 
personality  is  not  attractive,  and  the  dress  in  which  it  is 
put  forth  is  still  less  so;  but  it  is  a  powerful  personality, 
and  its  effect  is  the  greater  because,  in  the  main  part  of 
his  characteristic  work,  it  is  through  the  praise  and 
apotheosis  of  personality  in  surpassing  men  that  it  is  put 
forth  and  reflected.  He  wrote  of  the  hero  in  every  part 
of  the  field,  and  made  hero-worship  a  kind  of  initiation 
into  his  later  more  abstract  doctrines  of  the  divine  right 
of  force,  the  aristocracy  of  genius,  the  incompetency  of 
masses,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  reactionary  gospel  he 
preached  in  his  violent  denunciations  of  modern  democ- 
racy. The  reader  need  not  accompany  him  to  the  end; 
but  in  the  earlier  great  essays,  such  as  those  on  Burns, 
Goethe,  Voltaire,  and  the  like,  and  more  particularly  in 
"Sartor  Resartus,"  which  is  always  an  illuminating  and 
invigorating  book,  he  finds  views  of  life  and  its  workings 
in  which  philosophy  takes  more  effective  possession  of 
the  essay  than  in  any  other  writer.  It  is,  too,  philosophy 
in  a  highly  imaginative  form,  whether  stated  in  a  system, 
if  one  can  give  that  name  to  what  is  hardly  more  than 
one  huge  metaphor,  in  "Sartor  Resartus,"  or  introduced 
as  a  comment  in  the  critical  biographical  essays  and  the 
chapters  on  heroism.  The  interest  is,  of  course,  pre- 
dominantly moral  or  social,  but  it  finds  literary  expres- 
sion, is  blended  with  great  figures  and  great  events,  with 


OTHER   PROSE    FORMS  113 

epical  elements,  with  surpassing  characters,  with  human 
truth,  and  it  never  fails  to  be  picturesque,  fervid,  glowing 
with  conviction.  The  genius  of  Carlyle  was,  like  De 
Quincey's,  primarily  one  for  expression;  it  is  by  its  liter- 
ary quality  that  his  work  continues  to  make  its  appeal; 
among  the  essayists  he  is  the  moralist,  the  social  phil- 
osopher, whose  material  is  rather  human  life  doing  and 
suffering  than  any  abstract  principle,  and  who  sees  it 
through  the  imagination. 

Lamb,  De  Quincey  and  Carlyle  illustrate  the  essay  in 
the  three  fields  of  sympathy,  imagination  and  morality, 
and  they  are  excellent  types  of  the  English  handling  of 
the  form  which  is  very  free.  The  varieties  of  it  cannot 
be  exhausted  in  a  list.  The  tradition,  perhaps,  still  is 
that  the  early  essayists  of  the  Queen  Anne  age  are  the 
classical  exemplars  of  it,  especially  Addison  and  Steele; 
in  both  the  reader  feels  the  personality  of  the  writer,  as 
he  also  does  in  Goldsmith,  somewhat  with  the  intimate 
touch  that  Lamb  gives,  and  when  these  three  writers  have 
human  character  for  their  subject,  their  charm  lasts;  but 
what  really  survives  of  them  can  be  included  in  a  small 
volume.  The  English  scholar  will  be  acquainted  with  the 
essay  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  appreciate  it,  but  the 
reader  will  commonly  spare  it  and  turn  to  the  quite  dif- 
ferent essayists  of  a  later  time,  to  the  measured  literary 
talk  of  Arnold  or  the  exquisite  portraits  of  Pater,  who 
are  the  two  last  well-established  names  in  England,  and 
to  Lowell  and  Emerson  among  Americans,  both  of  whom 
in  different  ways  were  masters  of  the  form.  The  essay 
keeps  pace  with  the  novel  as  the  kind  of  writing  that 
seems  best  suited  to  the  uses  of  our  public,  and  like  that 
varies  from  instruction  to  mere  entertainment  and  takes 
every  color  from  the  artistic  to  the  humorous,  reflecting 
the  entire  range  of  literary  tastes  and  pursuits. 


114  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

There  are  other  forms  of  prose,  but  these  are  the  main 
forms  in  which  a  literary  value  is  found  and  sufficiently 
illustrate  the  nature  of  literature,  the  objects  of  its  at- 
tention and  the  modes  of  its  appeal  in  its  lesser  phases. 
In  the  mass  of  miscellaneous  books  there  is  often  the 
characteristic  material  of  literature  and  a  literary  treat- 
ment which  make  the  author's  work  interesting,  though 
it  may  not  reach  any  high  degree  of  distinction  and  may 
remain  practically  unknown.  It  is  a  common  experience 
of  the  reader,  especially  if  he  have  desultory  habits,  to 
find  such  volumes  and  to  profit  by  them.  It  is  well  to 
read  books  that  have  an  established  place  and  authors  of 
reputation;  but  an  open  welcome  and  a  broad  tolerance 
also  have  their  advantages,  and  there  is  often  a  freshness 
in  the  unknown  writer,  a  sense  of  discovery  and  a 
heightened  interest  that  are  lacking  in  the  books  that  all 
men  read.  In  books  of  character  and  observation  espe- 
cially, one  finds  this  treasure-trove,  which  wins  the 
reader  more  frequently  by  the  wealth  of  its  material  than 
by  the  literary  treatment,  for  a  writer  has  often  genuine 
matter  who  lacks  the  skill  to  adorn  it  in  the  telling.  A 
plain  tale,  if  it  be  originally  interesting,  always  holds  its 
interest.  When  so  much  is  written  as  in  our  day,  a  great 
portion  must  have  only  a  restricted  vogue,  but  its  ex- 
cellence for  those  who  find  it  is  the  same.  In  these 
humbler  walks  of  literature  there  is  much  more  of  actual 
entertainment  and  profit  than  is  commonly  acknowledged. 
The  interest  is  the  same  as  that  of  a  classic,  though  it 
may  not  be  so  finely  embodied,  and  the  vitalizing  power 
is  the  same,  though  it  may  not  be  so  rich.  The  better  way 
is  to  give  a  hearing  to  every  promising  book,  without  too 
proud  a  scanning  of  its  source  and  stamp,  and  to  have 
familiar  acquaintance  with  many  books  outside  the  sacred 


OTHER   PROSE   FORMS  115 

presence  of  standard  literature.  One  acquires  thus  a  truer 
sense  of  the  value  of  the  classic,  and  at  the  same  time 
keeps  in  current  touch  with  his  contemporaries;  nor  is  he 
really  assured  of  his  own  discrimination  until  he  finds 
books  for  himself  and  knows  that  they  are  sound.  The 
power  to  appreciate  literature  does  not  involve  its  con- 
stant exercise  upon  the  highest  examples.  The  essential 
thing  is  to  know  what  makes  literary  quality,  what  are 
the  ends  and  means  of  the  art,  what  are  the  modes  of 
intimacy  with  its  works;  when  this  is  known  —  and  it  is 
best  known  through  standard  authors  —  the  best  use  of 
the  knowledge  is,  perhaps,  not  to  master  a  past  literature 
in  its  great  compass  and  detail,  but  to  apply  it  to  the 
contemporary  world  in  the  natural  course  of  reading  what 
attracts  our  tastes  and  draws  out  our  sympathies  in  our 
own  time.  It  is  natural  for  a  book  to  die;  few  books  that 
are  old  have  a  vital  connection  with  life  as  it  now  is,  but 
these  if  they  appeal  to  us  are  favorites,  the  books  to  which 
one  returns  and  that  we  regard  as  silent  friends  of  life, 
comrades  of  our  fortunes  and  our  moods;  they  are  strong 
in  our  affection  because  they  are  a  part  of  our  past.  Such 
books  stand  apart  on  a  shelf  of  their  own,  and  are  mainly 
classics  with  some  humble  companions;  not  to  know  litera- 
ture through  its  length  and  breadth  and  to  be  wise  judges 
in  its  presence,  but  to  gather  this  little  shelf-ful,  is  the 
best  fruit  of  literary  appreciation. 


CHAPTER  VII 

PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS 

Literary  counsel  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  apparatus 
for  literary  study  is  plentiful;  manuals,  histories,  com- 
mentaries and  guides  to  the  choice  of  books  exist  in  pro- 
fusion. There  is  an  embarrassment  of  such  riches.  The 
objection  to  these  is  that,  of  the  two  traditional  ends  of 
literature,  to  please  and  to  instruct,  they  take  note  too 
exclusively  of  the  second.  The  two  ends  should  not  be 
made  to  neutralize  each  other;  yet  this  is  often  the  case. 
Excess  of  instruction  leads  to  one's  being  bored;  excess 
of  pleasure  leads  to  frivolity.  It  is,  perhaps,  better  to 
consider  the  process  rather  than  the  ends.  Literature  is 
a  key  to  one's  own  heart;  it  is  also  a  key  to  the  lives  of 
others;  there  are  other  ways  of  learning  one's  own  nature 
and  human  nature  in  general,  but  outside  of  direct  ex- 
perience and  observation  literature  is  the  principal  means 
of  obtaining  knowledge  of  human  life.  The  most  efficient 
form  of  the  knowledge  is  that  which  art  gives,  storing  it 
in  t5^ical  examples  in  imaginative  literature;  but  it  also 
is  found  where  art  is  imperfectly  applied,  as  in  the  sub- 
sidiary forms  of  literature,  or  even  where  art  is  absent 
and  truth  is  set  forth  barely  and  abstractly.  Imaginative 
art  condenses  and  recreates  experience  in  order  to  clarify 
it  for  the  reason  and  magnetize  it  for  the  affections  and 
sympathies.  It  seeks  to  include  all  of  life  and  know  it 
in  its  essentials.    Instruction  proceeds  from  the  matter, 

ii6 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  117 

pleasure  from  the  form.  The  definition  is  somewhat 
narrow,  however,  and  too  antithetical,  taking  too  exclu- 
sive note  of  merely  esthetic  pleasure,  whereas  the  pleasure 
arising  from  literature  springs  also  from  other  than 
formal  sources  and  is  mixed  of  many  kinds.  The  knowl- 
edge of  human  life  is  antecedent  to  the  pleasure  flowing 
from  such  knowledge  in  any  form,  and  is  the  condition 
without  which  there  can  be  no  pleasure.  The  acquisition 
and  interpretation  of  experience  is  the  core  of  the  process, 
which  looks  to  a  broad  comprehension  and  penetration  of 
the  nature  of  humanity  and  its  career  in  the  past  and  the 
present.  The  starting  point,  however,  is  the  individual, 
the  reader  himself.  It  is  this  fact  that  makes  it  difficult 
to  lay  down  a  definite  rule  in  literary  study.  The  per- 
sonality of  the  reader  is  never  to  be  lost  sight  of.  He 
has  special  aptitudes  and  tastes  which  make  one  book 
rather  than  another,  one  kind  of  literature  rather  than 
another,  one  epoch  rather  than  another,  a  better  mode 
of  access  to  experience,  a  stronger  stimulus  to  the  imagi- 
nation, a  more  vitalizing  power  to  his  whole  being.  Litera- 
ture unlocks  power  of  life  in  the  individual  as  well  as 
gives  knowledge  of  life;  it  is  best,  in  any  instance,  when 
the  two  are  one  act  and  the  knowledge  is  given  by  the 
unlocking  of  power  and  as  a  consequence  of  it.  TheHpe?^ 
sonality  of  the  individual  is  the  prime  element  in  deter- 
mining what  is  best  for  his  growth  in  order  that  there 
may  always  be  the  greatest  vital  connection  in  his  study 
of  life  between  himself  and  his  instruments;  they  should 
be,  as  it  were,  extensions  of  his  own  power,  outgrowths  of 
himself.  It  is  wise  for  the  reader,  therefore,  to  have  a 
large  share  of  self-respect,  to  prefer  his  own  natural 
choices,  to  give  latitude  to  his  own  wandering  tastes,  to 
indulge  his  own  characterise  will  give  a  fair  trial  to 


ii8  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

poetry  and  prose,  to  this  or  that  author,  especially  when 
recommended  by  long  reputation  and  the  judgment  of 
generations,  but,  in  the  end,  he  will  read  or  not  read 
according  as  he  finds  his  own  account  in  it.  The  good 
reader  is  one  who  never  abdicates;  with  him  rests  the 
decision  in  his  own  case.  Though  appearances  may  be 
against  him,  though  he  may  remain  long  or  even  always 
in  a  lower  range  of  taste  and  a  narrower  sphere  of  knowl- 
edge, it  is  better  so  than  that  he  should  default  to  himself. 
He  cannot  profitably  get  ahead,  in  his  reading,  of  the  man 
he  is;  he  cannot  out-race  his  own  shadow  on  life;  he 
must  build  knowledge,  experience,  feeling,  his  world,  in 
his  own  image,  interpreting  what  is  new  by  his  own  past 
and  passing  from  the  man  he  is  to  the  man  he  may  be- 
come by  successive  and  natural  stages  of  self-develop- 
ment. Self-reliance,  to  trust  one's  own  nature,  is  as 
radical  a  necessity  in  literary  study  as  in  other  parts  of 
life;  it  is  the  best  way  of  man-making. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  simplest  ap- 
proach to  literature  is  by  means  of  the  books  nearest  to 
the  reader,  which  are  in  the  main  those  of  his  own  time 
and  of  the  next  preceding  age.  He  is  thus  introduced  to 
the  living  ideas  and  most  vivid  interests  of  humanity  in 
the  world  in  which  he  has  to  live.  An  exception  should 
be  made  of  the  greatest  books  of  world  literature,  but  the 
exception  is  often  more  apparent  than  real.  In  their  uni- 
versal appeal  these  books  are  contemporary  with  every 
age.  "Don  Quixote,"  the  "Iliad,"  Dante's  "Divine 
Comedy,"  for  example,  should  be  read  in  early  life;  such 
books  are  landmarks  of  the  intellectual  life  and  give  pro- 
portion to  all  later  reading;  others,  like  Plutarch's  "Lives'* 
and  Gibbon's  "History,"  should  also  be  read  in  youth, 
and  they  have  the  advantage  of  giving  a  vast  amount  of 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  119 

human  history  at  a  single  stroke,  expanding  and  storing 
the  mind  wonderfully  with  a  sense  of  the  extent  and  ma- 
jestic movement  of  man's  historic  career.  To  read  these 
works,  whether  of  fiction,  poetry,  or  history,  is,  at  the 
time,  an  intellectual  feat,  and  as  conducive  to  confidence 
and  vigor  in  the  intellectual  part  of  youth  as  winning  a 
cup  or  turning  the  tide  of  a  game  in  its  physical  part.  It 
is  immaterial  to  what  degree  the  works  be  comprehended 
in  their  fullness  and  power;  the  reader  takes  what  he  can 
of  them,  and  though  he  were  a  mature  man  he  can  do  no 
more,  for  no  one  exhausts  their  richness;  it  is  sufficient 
that  in  his  youth  he  be  in  touch  with  life  in  its  greatness, 
and  there  is  besides  a  power  in  the  years  of  boyhood  to 
give  charm  to  such  literature  that  is  missed  if  it  be  read 
too  late.  The  youth  reads  everything  as  romance,  such  is 
his  mental  freshness  and  the  warmth  of  life  in  him  and 
the  fascination  of  the  discovery  of  the  scene  of  life  and 
its  doings.  In  the  biography  of  the  boyhood  of  genius 
such  books  continually  crop  out  as  the  great  events  and 
revealing  moments  of  the  boy's  life,  those  from  which  he 
dates  his  emergence  into  the  world  of  men,  his  conscious- 
ness of  the  powers  within  and  about  him,  his  awakening; 
and  what  takes  place  in  the  boyhood  of  genius  measurably 
occurs  in  ordinary  youth  placed  in  the  same  circum- 
stances. The  great  books  of  the  world  should  be  put  into 
the  hands  of  youth  at  the  earliest  possible  time. 

In  the  case  of  works  of  less  eminence  the  natural  way 
is  to  read  English  books,  and,  in  particular,  those  of  the 
last  century.  A  so-called  course  of  reading  of  any  sort 
is  seldom  a  very  good  mode  of  procedure.  It  is  better  to 
read  single  authors  that  attract  the  reader,  to  read  a  good 
deal  of  one  author  at  a  time,  to  become  familiar  with  him 
and  his  interests  in  life,  as  shown  in  his  books,  and  with 


120  APPRECIATION  OF  LITERATURE 

his  ideas.  If  one  has  appropriated  a  few  books  thus  with 
vivacity  of  interest  and  vigor  of  mind,  if  one  has  made 
friends  with  a  few  authors  so  as  to  know  and  love  them 
and  prize  them,  he  has  learned  the  first  secret,  however 
unconsciously,  and  mastered  the  power  of  appreciation. 
The  rest  is  only  a  repetition  of  the  process  as  new  authors 
come  into  the  field  of  attention  and  new  tastes  and  in- 
terests develop  within  and  the  old  grow  and  fructify.  In 
such  a  way  of  reading  enthusiasm  should  be  an  increasing 
trait,  and  enjoyment  also.  The  value  of  a  few  authors 
well  known  and  liked  is  greater  to  the  mind  than  that  of 
many  authors  imperfectly  mastered;  it  is  what  friendship 
is  to  mere  acquaintance  in  society.  A  course  of  reading 
in  the  ordinary  sense,  as  of  the  nineteenth-century  poets, 
for  example,  has  its  principal  convenience  in  the  ample 
opportunity  it  gives  the  reader  for  such  a  private  selec- 
tion, but  he  should  consign  his  fortunes  to  his  own  choices 
or  seek  only  such  guidance  as  may  serve  to  direct  him  to 
new  lines  of  attention,  to  open  ideas  to  him,  to  exercise  his 
reflection  in  fresh  ways  and  to  give  him  the  sense  of  sym- 
pathy in  his  pleasures  and  support  in  them.  It  is  the 
reader  who  reads  the  book,  and  what  he  puts  into  it  is 
unknown  to  any  one  else  except  by  an  intuitive  sympathy; 
the  reaction  of  his  own  past  on  the  book  is  often  the  most 
living  part  of  its  value  to  him;  he  should  be  left  much 
to  himself,  or  if  not  so  left  he  should  keep  much  to  him- 
self. The  best  readers  in  colleges  are  those  who  take  their 
own  way  somewhat  carelessly  but  obstinately  like  Cal- 
verley  and  Emerson.  After  a  while  the  spheres  of  the 
favorite  authors  who  are  known  and  prized  will  begin  to 
grow  more  inclusive;  the  authors  will  gather  into  groups, 
the  Lake  School,  the  brotherhood  of  Keats  and  Shelley, 
the  neo-pagans,  as  the  case  may  be,  and  the  groups  will 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  121 

begin  to  coalesce  into  the  romantic  movement  as  a  whole. 
When  this  stage  is  reached,  the  time  has  come  for  such 
aid  as  literary  histories  can  give  in  tracing  the  connec- 
tions of  the  age,  drawing  out  the  general  traits,  the  his- 
toric position,  the  antecedents  of  the  whole;  such 
information,  though  it  belongs  to  history,  is  an  aid  to  the 
fuller  and  especially  the  more  intelligent  appreciation  of 
the  authors.  It  is,  however,  the  authors  that  should  be 
in  the  foreground  of  early  literary  study,  and  not  the 
period  or  the  movement  which  embraces  them,  so  far  at 
least  as  the  characteristic  literary  power  plays  a  part  in 
self-education. 

It  is  by  no  means  necessary  to  restrict  one's  choice  of 
books  within  nearly  contemporary  literature  until  the 
whole  is  grasped  as  a  historical  period.  It  is  better  to 
take  the  great  authors  first,  who  give  scale  to  their  con- 
temporaries and  to  time;  to  know  Shakespeare,  Spenser, 
Milton,  Pope,  Gray,  among  the  poets,  and  Bacon,  Swift, 
Fielding,  Goldsmith,  Burke  among  the  prose  writers.  The 
rule  is  to  know  first  the  greatest  of  all  and  to  be  familiar 
with  them.  In  English  it  is  of  little  utility  to  ascend 
higher  than  the  Elizabethan  age.  Chaucer  is  a  great 
writer,  but  to  all  intents  and  purposes  his  language  is  a 
past  dialect  of  English,  and  to  the  general  reader  is  un- 
intelligible; outside  of  Chaucer  early  English  literature 
has  only  a  scholastic  interest.  It  is  agreeable,  even  if  one 
should  never  command  justly  a  whole  period  of  English, 
to  make  acquaintance  with  some  minor  period,  or  rather 
group,  and  to  know  it  with  thoroughness.  The  Lake 
School,  or  the  Queen  Anne  essayists,  or  the  religious 
writers  of  the  seventeenth  century,  or  the  cavalier  poets, 
or  Dr.  Johnson's  circle,  are  examples;  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  such  a  group,  with  which  the  reader  has  a  nat- 


122  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

ural  sympathy,  discloses  attractiveness  and  significance 
in  literature  in  quite  a  different  way  from  its  appreciation 
in  single  authors,  and  to  have  such  an  acquaintance  with 
a  group  is  a  mental  satisfaction.  The  minor  literature  of 
both  prose  and  poetry  in  English  can  be  easily  controlled 
in  books  of  selections,  either  confined  to  a  single  author, 
as  in  the  case  of  Swift,  or  in  anthologies,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  Elizabethan  lyric.  In  general,  it  is  undesirable  to 
confine  one^s  choice  either  to  prose  or  poetry,  or  to  any 
one  kind  of  literature;  fiction  should  alternate  with 
drama,  and  the  essay  with  the  lyric,  since  the  complexion 
of  life  is  thus  better  preserved  and  wholeness  of  literary 
taste  secured.  Neither  should  one  read  the  classics  al- 
ways, and  think  time  wasted  if  bestowed  on  less  imposing 
books;  it  is  as  if  one  were  to  make  the  week  one  eternal 
Sabbath.  One  cannot  in  literature  any  more  than  in  life 
live  at  the  top  of  his  forces;  and  whether  it  be  ^'the  diffi- 
cult air  of  the  iced  mountain  top"  or  the  breath  of 
Arcady  that  the  reader  inhales,  he  must  be  content  with 
a  less  refined  mental  diet  and  common  books.  Humbler 
literature  has  also  its  place,  practically,  in  life,  and  dis- 
charges the  function  of  literature,  to  enlighten  and  con- 
sole, with  wide  effectiveness. 

The  manner  of  reading  which  has  been  indicated  might 
not  make  a  man  a  scholar  in  English  literature;  but  it 
is  assumed  that  what  the  reader  desires  is  the  power  of 
literature  and  not  knowledge  of  it  in  itself.  If  one  de- 
sires the  knowledge  of  it,  he  approaches  it  scholastically 
through  dictionaries,  manuals,  histories,  the  hundred 
varieties  of  comment.  A  certain  degree  of  knowledge  is 
serviceable;  but  if  much  is  required  to  make  a  book  in- 
telligible, it  is  practically  a  dead  book  for  the  general 
reader.    Literary  history  is  the  most  untrustworthy  form 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  123 

of  history,  and  is  to  be  read  with  much  dubiousness;  the 
subject  is  complex  and  involves  many  intangible  elements. 
The  shorter  it  is  and  the  more  confined  to  a  tabulation  of 
external  fact  and  well  made  out  general  traits,  the  more 
useful  it  is  to  the  reader.  The  other  illumination  that  he 
may  desire  is  better  found  in  the  essays  of  appreciative 
critics  like  Lamb  or  acute  commentators  like  Coleridge, 
in  biographies  strongly  personal  in  their  narrative,  and 
in  the  history  of  social  manners,  the  fund  of  reminiscence 
and  other  side-lights  which  make  us  acquainted  with  such 
a  group  as  that  of  Pope  or  of  Johnson.  The  reading  of 
memoirs,  generally,  is  a  great  aid  to  literary  study  since 
they  present  the  facts  in  a  strongly  human  form.  It  is 
human  truth  that  is  the  great  subject  of  literature;  it  is 
the  scene  and  play  and  fortune  of  life  itself;  and  to  sub- 
stitute literary  history  for  it,  as  a  matter  of  lives,  dates, 
periods,  movements,  and  styles,  and  social  and  political 
phenomena  and  the  like,  is  as  if  in  art  one  were  to  read 
manuals  and  catalogues  and  theories  of  perception  instead 
of  looking  at  pictures  and  statues.  It  is  true  that  the 
education  of  the  eye  and  heart  by  contemplation  of  visible 
beauty  is  a  subtle  thing;  so  is  the  education  of  the  soul 
by  literature;  but  it  is  a  very  real  thing,  well-nigh  omni- 
present in  life;  and  it  issues  not  in  information,  however 
detailed  and  well-ordered,  about  the  thing,  but  in  insight 
into  life  and  fate,  in  sympathy  with  whatever  is  human, 
in  apprehension  of  what  seems  the  divine,  —  issues,  that 
is,  in  the  greater  power  to  live.  This,  and  not  mere  in- 
struction, is  the  end  of  literature;  and  this,  and  not  mere 
information,  is  the  end  of  literary  study. 

The  approach  to  foreign  literature,  outside  of  the  uni- 
versal works  already  mentioned,  is  a  more  difficult 
matter ;  yet  to  know  English  literature  alone  is  like  know- 


IH  APPRECIATION   OF  LITERATURE 

ing  English  history  without  the  history  of  the  continent, 
and  it  is  the  more  defective  because  foreign  elements  enter 
strongly  into  English  literature  which  has  displayed  great 
assimilative  and  sympathetic  power  with  regard  to  the 
literature  of  other  lands.  The  question  of  translations  is 
to  be  met  at  the  threshold.  Greatly  as  opinions  differ  on 
the  subject,  it  is  useless  for  the  reader  to  suppose  that 
even  in  the  best  translations  he  gets  either  the  original 
work  or  its  equivalent,  as  a  form  of  art  or  in  its  native 
meaning  to  its  own  people.  In  poetry,  more  particularly, 
he  gets  only  a  diminished  glory;  to  read  a  great  poet  in 
a  translation  is  like  seeing  the  sun  through  smoked  glass. 
There  is  a  double  obstacle;  the  form  itself  is  untrans- 
latable, the  melodic  mold  of  life  in  language;  and,  in 
addition,  the  native  temperament,  mixed  of  race,  circum- 
stances and  long  tradition,  is  assumed  in  the  poem  to  be 
in  alliance  with  it,  to  respond  to  and  support  it  and  assist 
in  its  understanding,  and  the  more  national  the  work  the 
greater  is  its  reliance  on  this  suggestiveness,  which  is  only 
completed  in  meaning  and  reach  by  the  power  of  the  race, 
its  intuition,  its  ideals,  its  associations,  all  that  is  un- 
spoken in  it  passing  into  the  poem  and  becoming  a  silent 
but  potent  language  there.  To  understand  a  canzone  of 
Dante  or  of  Leopardi  one  must  feel  as  an  Italian  feels;  to 
appreciate  its  form  he  must  know  the  music  of  the  form 
as  only  the  Italian  language  can  hold  and  eternize  it. 
Translation  is  impotent  to  overcome  either  of  these  diffi- 
culties; at  the  best  it  yields  an  imperfect  rendering  of 
both  form  and  meaning,  making  an  indifferent  appeal  by 
inferior  means;  generally  in  the  translation  of  a  great 
classic  the  uninstructed  mind  naively  wonders  why  it  was 
ever  thought  great.  Prose  suffers  less  than  poetry,  it  is 
true,  but  the  case  of  "Don  Quixote,"  perhaps  the  most 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  125 

untranslatable  of  prose  works  though  many  times  at- 
tempted, shows  the  presence  there  of  the  same  difficulty. 
The  natural  approach  to  foreign  literature  is  through 
those  portions  of  it  which  have  a  near  tie  to  English.  The 
fundamental  tradition  of  English  poetry,  on  its  foreign 
side,  is  classical  in  its  sources  and  is  continued  by  the 
medium  of  the  South  mainly  by  Italian  literature.  Greece 
and  Italy  have  contributed  most  to  English  poetry; 
familiarity  with  their  literature  and  the  Latin,  which  nat- 
urally binds  them  and  is  intermediary,  is  most  useful  to 
the  reader  in  his  study  of  English,  and  also  most  easy  in 
the  expansion  of  his  interest  beyond  the  domain  of 
English.  Greek  is  so  fundamental  in  our  culture  that  it 
is  hardly  possible  to  overestimate  its  importance.  When- 
ever the  reader  finds  anything  about  Greece  that  he  has 
not  read,  it  is  a  safe  rule  to  read  it;  he  is  sure  to  find  it 
useful.  Whether  in  the  form  of  direct  translations  or  of 
those  scholarly  interpretations  of  the  Greek  genius, 
literary,  artistic,  and  social,  in  which  Engjish  is  uncom- 
monly rich,  the  study  of  the  Greek  is  a  means  of  growth 
in  literary  power  and  in  command  of  literary  methods  and 
points  of  view,  more  valuable  by  far  than  is  the  case  with 
any  single  literature  of  the  later  world.  Its  usefulness 
in  the  drama  has  already  been  mentioned;  but  it  illus- 
trates every  poetic  form  with  brilliant  examples  and  is 
hardly  less  universal  in  prose.  The  novel,  in  its  per- 
fection, was  a  later  product;  other  kinds  of  narrative, 
however,  were  practised  with  unsurpassed  skill;  and, 
speaking  generally,  Greek  prose  is  unrivaled  in  beauty, 
while  in  matter  it  is  full  of  wisdom  that  grows  not  old. 
The  Greek  is  full  of  ideas  and  deeply  engaged  with  them, 
and  in  intellectual  interest  is  on  a  parity  with  modern 
literatures.    The  more  the  reader  enters  into  these  writ- 


126  APPRECIATION  OF   LITERATURE 

ings,  the  more  he  wonders  at  the  intelligence  of  that 
people  and  at  the  amount  of  their  literature  which  is  still 
modern  in  interest,  whether  as  a  picture  of  life  or  as  a 
discussion  of  truth  or  for  simply  esthetic  qualities.  Greece 
is  the  most  interesting  country  of  all  in  a  human  way,  and 
excelled  all  in  the  art  of  literature,  which  is  the  most 
human  of  the  arts.  The  more  familiar  the  reader  be- 
comes with  Greek  books,  and  with  the  ideals  of  the  people 
that  produced  them,  and  the  more  he  is  able  to  take  the 
intellectual  and  esthetic  mold  of  the  Greek  into  his  own 
mind  and  have  Greek  habits  of  perception,  the  better  is 
he  fitted  for  literary  appreciation  of  any  kind;  he  has 
the  criteria  of  judgment  planted  in  himself  and  carries 
them  about  implicit  in  his  mind.  It  is  for  this  reason 
that  in  literature  classical  education  was  so  efficient  in 
the  past;  it  developed  much  that  underlies  literature  and 
makes  it  instinctive.  The  reader,  though  not  classically 
educated,  can  still  regain  for  himself  a  certain  part  of 
this  lost  benefit,  by  attention  to  Greek;  the  literature  is 
in  itself  of  the  highest  interest,  and  mastery  of  it  gives 
also  an  understanding  and  command  of  the  literatures 
that  grew  out  of  it  in  later  days,  which  nothing  else  can 
replace. 

Next  to  Greek  the  Italian  is  most  important,  both  in 
connection  with  English  poetry,  which  has  often  been  in 
close  touch  with  it,  and  for  its  own  poetic  value;  but 
Italian  literature  need  not  be  so  thoroughly  known  as 
the  Greek.  In  general,  English  acquaintance  with  it  is 
confined  to  the  few  famous  poets  and  one  or  two  prose 
writers.  Italian  literature  is  very  extensive  and  is  of  a 
high  degree  of  culture,  but  it  is  not  easily  appreciated 
unless  the  reader  has  an  acquaintance  with  the  country 
itself  and  a  love  of  the  people  that  comes  from  personal 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  127 

contact.  The  Latin  literature,  also,  is  to  be  known  rather 
by  a  few  great  writers  than  in  its  broad  extent.  It  is 
best  approached  through  French  critics,  who  present  it 
with  more  intelligence  than  other  scholars  and  with  the 
comprehension  of  minds  native  to  it.  Finally,  French 
literature  is  the  most  useful  in  the  modern  field,  both  for 
the  abundance  and  vigor  of  its  ideas  and  for  entertain- 
ment, for  the  scope  of  its  view  of  life  and  the  world  and 
its  skill  in  the  literary  interpretation  of  life  through  imagi- 
nation and  reflection.  Paris  is  still  the  intellectual  center 
of  Europe,  of  ideas  and  the  pleasures  of  a  refined  culture 
of  every  sort,  and  in  French  is  found  the  best  practice  of 
the  literary  art  in  the  modern  world.  Though  sporadic 
writers  of  genius  are  scattered  here  and  there  through 
Europe,  it  is  in  France  that  the  art  is  most  surely  sus- 
tained, most  variously  illustrated,  and  fills  the  largest 
sphere.  Its  literature  in  the  past,  too,  is  one  of  the  most 
splendid  in  the  world;  for  centuries  it  has  not  failed  in 
greatness  in  any  age.  It  is  nearer  in  temperament  and 
substance  to  the  English  than  is  the  Italian,  and  therefore 
more  accessible,  and  a  comprehensive  study  of  it  is  the 
most  substantially  fruitful  of  all  foreign  study,  though  it 
is  less  formative  than  the  Greek.  The  German  litera- 
ture has  had  but  slight  contact  with  English,  and  that 
not  important;  though  kindred  in  language  and  to  a  less 
extent  in  race,  the  English  is  by  its  culture  nearer  to  the 
southern  and  Latin  peoples,  and  much  that  is  characteris- 
tically German  finds  scant  welcome  in  English  tastes. 
Carlyle  illustrates  what  disqualifications  a  native  writer 
may  acquire  by  being  Teutonized  in  matter  and  style. 
German  literature  has  but  few  great  works,  and  though 
it  had  one  flourishing  period  during  which  it  gave  world- 
currency  to  its  ideas,  it  is  rather  by  its  philosophy  than 


128  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

by  its  imagination  that  the  German  genius  has  affected 
other  nations  and  found  expression  for  itself.  The  Eng- 
lish reader  naturally  looks  toward  France,  Italy,  and 
Greece,  and  is  more  sympathetic  with  Spain  and  the 
Orient  than  with  the  north  and  east  of  Europe.  It  is 
only  by  the  novel,  which  in  a  sense  has  become  inde- 
pendent of  nationality,  that  foreign  literatures  outside 
those  mentioned  are  practically  known. 

In  conclusion,  to  summarize  most  briefly  what  has  been 
said,  the  prime  consideration  in  the  whole  field  of  literary 
appreciation  is  to  avoid  making  literary  study  a  study  of 
something  else.  Nothing  is  more  common  in  practise 
than  to  do  this.  All  knowledge  that  exercises  the  mind 
is  useful  in  its  own  way;  but  culture  and  not  learning  is 
the  true  end  of  literary  study.  It  is  a  power  of  life  that 
is  sought,  "more  life  and  fuller  that  we  want.''  Imagina- 
tive literature  is  a  great  resource  for  such  growth;  to  live 
over  again  the  vivid  moments  of  life,  as  they  are  set  forth 
by  the  poets,  the  dramatists  and  the  novelists,  to  see  the 
procession  of  historic  life  in  its  great  events  and  the  con- 
stitution of  man  in  its  surpassing  characters  and  its  crises 
of  fate  and  passion,  to  know  the  human  truth  of  life  in 
whatever  form,  is  the  end  in  view.  It  is,  therefore,  a 
fatal  diversion  of  interest  to  attend  to  the  facts  of  literary 
history,  to  biographical  and  social  detail,  to  discussion 
of  the  problems  involved,  and  in  general  to  substitute  the 
comment  for  the  text.  Such  study  should  be  kept  strictly 
subsidiary  to  the  elucidation  of  the  matter,  and  so  far  as 
possible  should  be  dispensed  with.  The  question  is  not 
how  much  the  reader  can  know  about  the  work,  the 
author  and  the  age,  but  whether  he  truly  responds  to  the 
poem,  romance,  or  essay,  and  finds  there  an  expansion  of 
his  consciousness  of  life,  a  stimulation  of  his  own  powers, 


PRACTICAL   SUGGESTIONS  129 

an  inner  light  for  his  own  soul.  He  should  avoid  the 
comment  in  all  its  forms,  so  far  as  is  possible,  and  give 
himself  to  the  work. 

Secondly,  he  should  take  the  greatest  masters  first,  in 
the  order  in  which  interest  in  them  naturally  arises  in 
his  mind.  Some  reasons  for  this  have  already  been  given. 
The  main  reason,  however,  is  that  in  their  works  the 
great  and  commanding  features  of  life,  its  contour  both 
as  romance,  fate  and  character,  its  moral  geography,  are 
to  be  found.  One  who  has  read  the  Hebrew  prophets,  the 
Greek  dramatists  and  Shakespeare  has  a  view  of  the  es- 
sentials of  life  in  its  greatness  that  requires  little  sup- 
plementing; his  reading  thereafter  is  for  definition  and 
detail,  for  the  temporal  modeling  of  life  in  different 
periods  and  races  and  nations,  for  the  illumination  of  it 
in  exceptional  men  and  women  and  in  high  types  of  char- 
acter or  romantic  circumstances;  it  is,  in  general,  rather 
verification  of  old  truth  than  anything  more  that  he  finds. 
In  this  sense  the  great  writers  suffice  of  themselves,  if  they 
be  thoroughly  known,  without  the  need  of  reading  many 
books;  this  is  often  to  be  observed  in  life,  for  it  is  not 
needful  to  read  much  but  to  read  well;  yet  it  is  only  in 
maturity  that  the  depth  and  power  of  life  in  the  great 
writers  is  realized,  and  the  way  in  which  they  summarize 
and  contain  the  lesser  multitudinous  books  of  their  time, 
and  become  lasting  memorials  of  man's  life  in  their  age, 
is  understood.  If  these  writers  are  early  known  a  longer 
time  is  given  for  the  development  of  this  richer  meaning 
that  only  familiarity  and  the  passage  of  time  can  bring 
out  of  the  page. 

Lastly,  as  was  said  at  the  beginning,  literature  is  a 
means  of  extending  and  interpreting  experience  so  that 
the  reader  by  mental  growth  may  become  more  truly  mani 


130  APPRECIATION   OF   LITERATURE 

by  including  in  his  view  the  compass  of  man's  life  and 
developing  in  himself  the  powers  of  response  to  it  that  he 
possesses;  it  exists  for  the  use  of  the  individual  in  self- 
development.  This  is  the  point  of  view  that  has  been 
maintained  with  perhaps  wearisome  iteration  in  these 
chapters.  It  is  the  personal  appeal  of  literature  that  has 
been  dwelt  on  as  being  its  characteristic  value  in  culture. 
Personality  is  the  genius  of  life.  It  is  natural,  therefore, 
that  those  books  should  be  preferred  in  which  the  per- 
sonal appeal  is  strongest,  and  this  has  been  indicated  as 
being  the  right  choice  of  the  reader;  and  also  those  books 
should  be  preferred  in  which  the  matter  is  put  forth  in  the 
most  personal  form,  whether  by  the  creative  power  of 
the  imagination  in  the  greater  kinds  of  literature  or  by 
the  power  of  narrative  and  criticism  in  its  lesser  forms. 
In  this  way  life  is  seen  most  vividly,  picturesquely  and 
with  human  excitement;  life  yields  itself  most  richly  in 
the  forms  of  romance,  whether  in  imagination  or  in  fact. 
Personality  in  the  presentation  does  not  involve  any 
diminution  of  the  truth.  It  is  mental  truth,  not  material 
fact,  that  literature  gives;  literature  is  careless  of  fact 
as  such,  it  is  nothing  whether  the  thing  was  actual;  the 
reader  must  learn  to  live  in  the  mind  and  not  in  the 
senses,  in  principles  and  not  in  facts,  in  ideal  reality  as 
it  is  to  the  shaping  mind  and  the  dreaming  heart  of  the 
writer;  and  even  when  the  traveler  relates  an  adventure 
or  describes  a  landscape  before  his  eyes,  it  is  by  an  ideal 
element  in  it  that  he  makes  the  true  appeal.  Ideal  truth 
has  its  best  embodiment  in  a  person  and  the  human  events 
that  happen  to  him.  Life  is  then  at  its  high  tide.  Study 
has  great  deadening  power  over  life;  and  when  the  reader 
finds  this  deadening  influence  in  his  pursuit  of  literature,' 
when  personality  begins  to  fade  from  the  page,  and  the 


PRACTICAL    SUGGESTIONS  131 

abstract,  the  parasitical,  the  fact  encroach,  and  literature 
becomes  rather  a  form  of  knowledge  than  of  life,  then 
he  is  losing  the  proper  good  of  literature;  and  he  should 
seek  again  in  himself  and  his  authors  the  vitality  of  a 
personal  touch,  the  connection  of  life,  the  power  of  human 
truth.  The  great  thing  is  to  remain  alive,  in  one's  read- 
ing, and  nowhere  should  the  principle  of  life  be  more 
sacredly  guarded  than  in  its  most  immortal  presence, — 
imaginative  literature  and  those  other  forms  that  take 
their  color  from  its  human  methods. 


AMERICA  IN  LITERATURE 


CHAPTER  I 

THE    BEGINNINGS 

Everything  begins  in  the  middle  —  to  adapt  a  wise 
saying  —  like  an  epic  poem.  That  is  the  central  truth  of 
human  perspective.  Open  history  where  you  will,  and 
there  are  always  men  streaming  over  the  mountains  or 
the  sea  from  some  horizon,  bringing  with  them  arms  and 
cattle,  battle-songs  and  prayers,  and  an  imaginary  world; 
their  best  treasure  is  ever  the  seed  of  some  last  year's 
harvest.  Colonialism  is  a  word  too  often  used  to  dis- 
parage the  thing;  it  is  the  natural  condition  of  the  out- 
posts of  man's  spread  over  the  earth;  the  wave,  as  it 
breaks  on  new  shores,  is  salt  with  time.  England  was 
colonized,  and  Greece  and  India.  So  our  ancestors,  the 
first  Americans,  brought  with  them  the  past  as  well  as  the 
future  to  this  land.  It  is  not  often  that  books  make  an 
important  item  in  the  cargo  of  an  emigrant  ship.  The 
mother-tongue  is  brought,  and  in  it  is  the  great  sap  of 
thought,  aspiration,  and  resolve  that  shall  feed  institu- 
tions of  Church  and  State  as  they  arise;  but  the 
book-language  is,  in  the  main,  left  at  home;  it  is  the 
mouth-language,  where  literature  is  in  the  making,  that 
will  be  used  on  the  new  soil. 

The  pure  literary  influence  in  all  our  early  colonies,  the 
impact  of  the  book-past  of  England,  was  slightest  at  the 
South  and  strengthened  with  the  northing.  In  Virginia, 
generally,  the  first  estates  were  naturally  as  innocent  of 
learning  as  Osbaldistone  Hall;  there  was  a  countrified  in- 
difference to  it  befitting  a  young  squirarchy,  a  touch  of 

135 


136  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

contempt  felt  with  old-fashioned  English  frankness,  even 
a  dull  hatred  of  enlightenment,  as  when  the  Governor 
thanked  God  that  there  were  "no  free  schools  nor  print- 
ing," and  hoped  there  would  be  none  for  a  hundred  years. 
"God  keep  us  from  both!"  he  cried.  At  the  other  focus 
of  the  settlement,  in  New  England,  a  different  state  of 
affairs  prevailed,  though  there,  too,  the  pure  literary  in- 
fluence was  narrowly  limited.  But  as  in  the  dawn  of 
England  "Beowulf"  had  come  in  the  long  Danish  boats, 
and  many  an  exodus  has  gone  out  with  one  great  book 
which  was  like  brain  and  blood  to  the  little  race,  there  on 
Massachusetts  Bay  a  book  had  come  with  the  people;  and 
every  ship,  loaded  out  of  the  twenty  thousand  souls  of  the 
first  immigration,  brought  it  —  the  book  that  has  of  tenest 
crossed  the  sea  of  all  the  books  of  men  —  the  Bible.  It 
is  the  greatest  English  book,  and  in  this  small  folk  of 
English  stock  it  found  a  human  vehicle  of  power  equal 
to  its  greatness. 

This  nest  of  Puritans  is  commonly  thought  of  as  de- 
ficient in  that  large  part  of  the  human  genius  which  is 
enlightened  by  letters,  —  as  unimaginative;  and  because 
they  did  not  flower  out  with  polite  literature  they  are  said 
to  be  unliterary.  Yet  the  Puritan  line  in  England  was 
constituted  of  Spenser,  Milton,  and  Bunyan,  the  most 
purely  imaginative  minds  of  their  generations  for  a  cen- 
tury of  English  life;  though  it  should  be  observed  that  in 
these  instances  the  imagination  moved  in  molds  already 
prepared  for  it.  The  Puritans,  being  of  the  stock  they 
were,  could  not  but  be  imaginative,  romantic,  intense,  in 
vision,  emotion,  and  idea;  they  were  high-charged  with  all 
this  energy;  but  the  channels  were  prepared  for  it,  and 
they  found  their  literature  in  the  Bible.  If  they  required 
songs  of  praise,  they  "rolled  the  hymn  to  wintry  skies";  if 


THE   BEGINNINGS  137 

they  sought  expression  for  humiliation,  or  desired  to  illus- 
trate their  fortunes  or  passions,  their  sins,  trials,  and 
deliverances,  there  was  the  typical  narrative  and  drama  of 
human  life,  as  they  knew  it,  in  the  Scriptures;  they  turned 
to  their  one  book,  and  more  frequently,  as  their  descen- 
dants now  turn  to  whole  libraries,  and  found  in  it  the 
mirror  of  life.  The  Bible  was,  indeed,  to  use  the  language 
of  to-day,  like  a  great  literary  trust;  it  supplied  all  wants 
and  forbade  competition.  Such  a  book,  when  it  takes 
hold  of  a  people  so  completely  and  intimately  and  fills 
the  measure  of  their  spiritual  energy,  needs  to  recede  be- 
fore men  will  again  attempt  originally  the  task  it  per- 
forms, as  Shakespeare  must  recede  before  dramatic 
imagination  can  flourish  with  equal  new  power;  for, 
though  books  are  not  seldom  the  seeds  of  revolution,  a 
great  book  is  normally  a  powerful  conservative  force,  a 
true  bond  of  national  life. 

It  is,  however,  wide  of  the  mark  to  describe  a  people  to 
whom  the  Old  Testament  was  more  thoroughly  known 
than  Homer  to  the  young  Greeks  and  the  New  Testament 
more  familiar  than  Victor  Hugo  to  young  France,  as  an 
unliterary  people.  If  it  be  the  function  of  literature  to 
lift  the  thoughts  of  men,  to  educate  the  emotions,  to  shape 
character  towards  ideal  ends,  to  exalt  and  to  console,  and 
always  to  minister  to  the  spirit  in  its  walk  on  earth,  the 
Bible  discharged  this  office  in  the  early  generation  of  the 
New  England  settlements  with  an  adequacy,  a  constancy, 
a  penetration,  a  completeness  of  efficacy  such  as  is  hardly 
to  be  paralleled  in  history.  It  was  their  rubric  of  prayer, 
their  lyric  of  praise,  the  parable  of  their  morality,  and 
they  adapted  it  to  be  the  epic  of  their  growing  state  where 
they,  too,  were  a  chosen  people  of  God  planted  in  the 
wilderness.    This  was  its  popular  significance. 


138  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

It  bred  a  learned  and  scholarly  clergy  besides,  vast 
producers  of  sermons,  controversial  tractates  and  specu- 
lative treatises  in  theology,  such  that,  if  the  book  had 
been  secular,  the  age  would  have  been  named  Alexan- 
drian; and  it  enforced  that  respect  for  learning  and  the 
literary  faculty  which  has  never  ceased  in  that  region,  as 
it  also  made  the  people  a  lettered  people  by  the  mere 
necessity  that  it  should  be  read  by  all,  just  as  the  right 
to  vote  is  making  the  nation  at  large  now  a  lettered  nation. 
It  may  seem  like  reheating  old  fires  to  discourse  in  this 
way  of  the  place  of  the  Bible  in  our  beginnings;  but  it  is 
essential  for  a  true  comprehension  of  our  early  life  and 
letters,  and  the  relationship  between  them,  to  see  in  these 
first  generations  not  a  dull,  darkened,  unimaginative  folk, 
but,  in  a  true  sense,  one  of  the  most  literary  states  that 
ever  existed,  having  its  most  passionate  and  intense  life 
in  a  book  as  simple  and  significant  to  it  as  the  Koran  to 
Islam,  and  as  much  richer  than  the  Koran  in  art  and 
truth  as  the  Christian  life  exceeds  the  Moslem  faith.  To 
think  of  the  old  sermons  and  treatises  as  the  first  Ameri- 
can literature  is  like  speaking  of  the  commentaries  on 
Shakespeare  and  omitting  the  poet.  The  Bible  was  the 
book  in  which  the  first  Americans  found  what  literature 
has  to  give  to  the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  in  it  they  had 
their  full  and  overflowing  literary,  nor  should  one  hesi- 
tate to  say  their  artistic  life. 

And  what  was  this  life  that  the  Puritans  led  with  this 
book  for  their  brain  and  heart?  We  have  their  prayers, 
sweet  and  solemn  in  the  cadences  better  known  to  us  now 
in  the  English  Prayer-book;  we  have  the  letters  of  their 
wives,  like  Mrs.  Winthrop's,  mingling  human  affection 
with  divine  love,  as  if  these  New  England  mothers  were 
also  nuns  of  Christ's  cloister;  we  have  their  sermons,  now 


THE   BEGINNINGS  139 

terse  and  tense  and  studded  with  learning  better  known 
to  us  in  Milton,  now  with  the  flowing  amplitude  and  elo- 
quence that  to  our  ears  is  Taylor's,  or  with  the  vivid 
realism  of  vision  that  to  our  eyes  is  Bunyan's  limning  on 
the  darkness;  we  have  the  words,  but  the  light  to  read 
them  by  is  gone. 
The  clergy  themselves  are  stiff  to  us  as  their  portraits 

—  all  wig  and  gown  and  wooden  smiles  —  and  when  we 
think  of  them  it  is  most  often  as  fire-breathing  dragons, 
perhaps;  yet  they  were,  as  is  well  known,  men  of  great 
power  of  character,  with  some  of  what  seem  the  lost 
graces  of  greatness,  immense  intellectual  vigor,  moral 
authority,  dignity,  the  scholar's  refinement,  sanctity  even; 
and,  if  we  are  to  judge  by  what  their  friends  said  of  them 

—  and  how  else  shall  we  judge?  —  in  some  few,  at  least, 
all  the  poison  of  human  nature  had  gone  out  of  them  into 
their  creed  and  left  only  angelic  sweetness  in  their  souls; 
nor  is  it  only  in  Puritanism  that  such  a  miracle  has  been 
wrought,  but  it  is  found  in  intense  religious  life  elsewhere. 
The  people  who  sat  under  their  teaching  are  also  far  away 
in  the  past,  so  marked  in  their  double  consciousness,  as  it 
were;  on  the  one  side,  absorbed  in  practical  affairs,  fight- 
ing, exploring,  debating,  building  all  things  new;  on  the 
other,  absorbed  in  spiritual  self-scrutiny,  despairing,  hop- 
ing, doubting;  so  sure  in  every  touch  on  this  world  with 
axe  and  plough  and  gun,  yet  within  living  in  the  world  to 
come,  with  the  dreadful  uncertainty  which  world  it  would 
be.  One  sees  the  little  towns  of  low  houses  dotting  the 
coast,  the  clearings  landward,  the  few  boats  by  the  shore, 
the  deep  woods  all  about,  only  the  trail  or  the  river  for 
roads  —  a  wilderness  silent  and  dark,  the  summer  heat 
on  the  sparse  corn,  the  winter  drift  over  all;  peril  always 
near,  subsistence  often  uncertain,  a  hard  and  trying 


140  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

physical  life.  Yet  here,  as  always  where  life  is  great, 
spiritual  life  was  the  one  reality  in  the  midst  of  this 
stubborn  fact.  We  cannot  see  clearly  into  that  darkness. 
Perhaps  some  echoes  of  that  life  may  come  to  us  in  Scott's 
Covenanters,  or  in  the  romance  in  which  Hawthorne 
transposed  its  music,  but  it  comes  faintly;  only  the 
imagination  would  be  equal  to  telling  us,  and  the  secret 
is  lost.  The  heart  of  the  Puritan  is  a  closed  book.  The 
sermons,  the  diaries,  the  portraits,  the  so-called  colonial 
literature,  will  not  interpret  it;  they  are  as  much  in  the 
twilight  of  antiquity  as  Anglo-Saxon  chronicles  and 
riddles;  they  are  the  grave-clothes  left  behind,  but  the 
spirit,  our  brother  and  master,  is  gone. 

The  silence  that  has  fallen  on  the  Puritan  imagination, 
meditation,  and  passion  is,  nevertheless,  not  an  abnormal 
thing.  Something  similar  is  always  happening  in  our  ex- 
perience. As  life  rises  to  expression  in  us,  and  among 
men  at  large  to  whom  literature  is  a  living  power,  energy 
of  thought  and  emotion  is  draughted  off  through  the  es- 
tablished hereditary  mediums,  through  Shakespeare, 
Scott,  Dickens,  and  leaves  no  original  trace  of  itself.  The 
life  which  is  led  through  literature  —  and  it  is  always 
large  in  a  reading  people  such  as  ours  —  has  its  super- 
ficial swirl  and  froth  like  the  ocean,  its  thousand-tongued 
clamor  of  books  of  the  hour;  but  its  deep  currents  are 
silent,  as  the  influence  of  the  writers  just  named  with 
myriads  of  thousands  of  annual  readers  reminds  us.  The 
Bible  is  still  the  great  Gulf  Stream  in  the  literary  con- 
sciousness of  English  people,  and  their  life  is  daily  ex- 
pressed through  its  language  and  imagery  and  ideals,  the 
actual  life  of  each  day  from  matins  to  vespers;  but  it  is  a 
life  on  which,  as  of  old,  silence  falls  at  the  day's  end.  It 
leaves  no  original  record  of  itself  in  new  literature,  just 


THE   BEGINNINGS  141 

as  the  vitality  of  impulse,  sympathy,  and  world-hope, 
which  expresses  itself  in  us  by  an  appropriation  of  the 
genius  of  Burns,  Shelley,  or  Tennyson  to  our  own  uses, 
burns  out  without  shaping  new  molds  for  others. 

There  is  an  original  expression  which  creates  literature 
and  is  individualistic;  but  it  is  rather  in  this  sympathetic 
expression,  which  appropriates  literature  and  is  social, 
that  popular  literary  life  lies,  and  the  latter  may  flourish 
abundantly  when  the  former  seems  dead.  Such  was  the 
case  with  the  Puritan  genius;  it  used  literature  of  the  high- 
est quality,  but  it  produced  none,  realizing,  it  is  curious  to 
observe,  the  literary  ideal  of  Plato^s  Republic,  where  a 
traditional,  conservative,  and  sacred  poetry  was  to  reign, 
excluding  any  new  individual  expression. 

The  chief  end  of  literature  as  the  expression  of  life 
being  thus  anticipated  and  provided  for,  and  the  main 
stream  of  intense  experience,  out  of  which  the  creative 
impulse  comes,  being  directed  through  these  hereditary 
Scriptural  channels,  there  was  left  for  the  new  American 
speech  only  the  less  essential  things,  the  fringes  of  this 
life  in  its  higher  spiritual  manifestation,  and  especially 
the  whole  of  the  lower  plane  of  material  affairs,  the  con- 
temporaneous record  of  events,  and,  in  a  word,  the  en- 
vironment. 

Here,  too,  the  religious  life  sent  its  rays  from  the  center 
out  into  the  mortal  field.  There  was  an  aura,  for  example, 
of  special  providences  that  filled  the  whole  heaven  round 
the  settlements,  not  with  the  aloofness  of  miracle,  but 
with  a  homely,  hand-to-mouth  nearness,  so  that  the  gray 
goose  which  John  Dane  shot  on  Ipswich  River  could  not 
fall  from  the  sky  for  his  dinner  except  as  the  sparrow 
falls.  No  doubt  the  goose  was  as  real  to  him  as  Elijah's 
ravens;  and  such  a  trifle  best  illustrates  the  omnipresent 


142  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

nearness  of  Providence  in  the  people's  thought,  as  close 
with  the  helping  hand  as  with  the  all-seeing  eye.  There 
was  by  night  another  aura,  too,  of  darkness  from  the  pit, 
that  made  the  Essex  woods  gloom  and  creak  with  the 
Sabbath  of  witches,  and  gave  Salem  its  nightmare  year. 
The  nearness  of  the  devil  was  as  natural  as  the  nearness 
of  God;  and  if  lost  men  in  the  woods  or  on  the  sea  or  on 
ice-floes  take  their  hunter's  luck  as  providential,  as  they 
commonly  do,  it  is  as  instinctive  in  human  nature  to  feel 
in  the  sense  of  peril  in  the  wilderness,  in  the  slightness  of 
life-shelter  there,  some  diabolism  in  the  shades.  But 
while  remarkable  providences  and  witchcraft  delusions 
are  the  most  sensational  phases  of  the  record  of  our  early 
annalists  and  diarists,  the  best  part  of  it  lies  in  its  realistic 
story  of  the  life  of  the  times,  its  anecdotes  of  personal 
adventure,  Indian  captivity  and  escape,  explorations, 
voyages  on  the  rivers  and  coastwise,  the  shipwrecks,  like 
that  marvelous  one  of  Thacher  and  Avery,  the  surprising 
deliverances,  all  the  chronicle  of  pioneer  life. 

Here  the  old  English  speech,  still  smacking  of  the  times 
of  great  Elizabeth,  hardens  the  knotty  story  with  rude 
oaken  strength,  and  discloses  the  individual  primitive 
force,  the  daring,  the  resource  and  resolution  of  the  trans- 
planted stock,  with  picturesque  and  deep-bitten  realism 
in  every  scene.  It  is  primarily  a  literature  of  character 
in  the  raw  state  that  thus  sprang  up,  with  adventure  as 
its  mode  of  presentation;  it  is  the  stamped  life  of  the 
time,  that  has  proved  more  permanent  because  it  was 
written  down,  but  it  is  only  fragments  of  that  life  whose 
living  speech  was  so  much  more  abundant  and  made  the 
topic  of  secular  interest  round  every  meeting-house,  in 
all  the  taverns,  and  by  the  great,  blazing  hearths  of  the 
whole  country-side. 


THE   BEGINNINGS  143 

Historians,  in  their  turn,  took  up  the  tale  and  composed 
the  early  annals  of  the  New  World,  always  with  a  pride 
in  the  land,  and  some  thought  of  it  as  an  oasis  of  God 
in  His  dealing  with  mankind,  a  sense  that  it  was  a  place 
of  deliverance,  their  very  own,  God's  grant,  the  King's 
realm  rather  by  legal  courtesy  than  of  right;  the  divine 
right,  indeed,  was  in  themselves,  not  in  the  King.  The 
narrative  itself  is  meager  and  concerns  simple  things;  but 
the  spirit  of  it  contained  the  political  future.  So,  life 
beginning  now  to  be  long  in  the  land,  and  the  scattered 
settlements  to  multiply  and  knit  together  with  a  broader 
inclusion  of  common  mundane  interests,  commerce  spring- 
ing up  and  spreading  southward  to  the  West  Indies,  and 
wealth  from  home  produce  and  foreign  exchange  making 
rich  citizens  in  the  principal  towns,  that  movement  of 
secularization  set  in  which  was  the  result  of  this  growing 
diversity  in  employment,  outlook,  and  ambition,  and  the 
world  was  more  and  more,  and  its  problems  assertive  of 
their  privilege  to  be  first  and  its  ways  of  their  right  to 
be  commanding.  There  was  a  fading-out  of  the  old 
fervor,  a  reactionary  wave  of  the  great  awakening  in  re- 
ligion, but  the  lessening  oscillations  showed  that  the  ele- 
ment of  religion  had  shrunk  again  to  be  only  a  part  of 
life,  and  not  the  leading  public  part  now.  The  clergy  and 
the  magistrates  were  less  in  alliance,  as  one  power  of  the 
State,  and  the  former  had  lost  place.  They  had  left  a 
few  memorable  names  for  landmarks  —  Eliot,  Cotton 
Mather,  Edwards,  among  the  chief  —  and  some  folios, 
the  "Magnalia"  the  first;  but  the  Puritan  age  was  gone, 
the  land  was  settled,  the  main  interest  of  the  people  was 
secular,  questions  of  trade  and  taxes  came  forward,  and, 
foremost  of  all,  the  question  of  government.  If  literature 
in  the  first  century  was  mainly  one  that  came  home  to 


144  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

men's  bosoms,  it  was  now  one  that  came  home  to  their 
business.  Perhaps  the  illustrative  moment  of  the  change 
is  best  arrested  in  Franklin's  boyhood,  when  he  stayed 
at  home  from  evening  meeting  on  the  Sabbath,  not  with- 
out some  misgiving,  because  he  could  make  a  better  use 
of  his  time  in  study. 

The  founding  of  a  greater  State  than  the  Puritan  com- 
monwealth was  now  in  hand,  and  the  basis  of  it  was 
broader  in  the  roots  of  the  nation  among  the  dispersed 
colonies.  The  general  complexion  of  the  literature  which 
set  forth  the  growth  of  the  environment  of  the  new  Ameri- 
can life  was  the  same  in  all  the  colonies;  a  similar  record 
would  be  made  later  in  the  winning  of  the  West,  expe- 
rience vividly  felt  being  transcribed  in  the  words  of  those 
who  did  or  closely  observed  the  deeds;  and  in  these  gen- 
erations of  the  first  conquest  of  the  wilderness.  Colonel 
Norwood's  narrative  in  the  South  was  of  the  same  stripe 
as  such  memorabilia  were  to  be  everywhere.  Yet  in  the 
North,  owing  to  the  greater  strength  of  the  literary  habit, 
a  certain  primacy  remained  in  importance  and  fullness. 
In  the  new  political  development  this  would  no  longer  be 
the  case.  The  great  documents  of  this  literature,  the 
Declaration  and  the  Constitution,  were  written  to  the 
southward,  though  they  were  the  product  of  the  general 
sense  of  all;  and  round  about  them  the  writings  of  Jeffer- 
son, Adams,  Madison,  Paine,  Otis,  and  their  fellows  clus- 
tered as  a  literature  of  interpretation  of  the  great  ideas 
they  embodied,  in  a  manner  somewhat  analogous  to  the 
way  in  which  the  sermons  of  the  old  clergy  gathered 
around  the  Scriptures.  Oratory  had  sprung  up  in  the 
general  forum,  and  belonged,  like  the  newspapers,  to  the 
troubled  times;  and  having  great  ideas  to  feed  on,  and 
being  electrified  by  passion,  it  began  that  remarkable 


THE   BEGINNINGS  145 

career  which  had  its  climax  in  Webster  and  only  died  in 
Phillips. 

The  political  literature  of  the  Revolution  was  the  great 
achievement  of  the  age  in  the  intellectual  sphere;  and  it 
was  so  great  as  it  was  because  from  the  hour  when  its  im- 
mortal classic,  the  Declaration,  was  read  by  Washington's 
order  at  the  head  of  every  regiment,  the  practical  energy 
of  the  new-born  nation  went  into  it  completely,  engaged 
in  the  labor  of  applying  to  life  those  ideas  of  free  govern- 
ment which  had  become  the  absorbing  thought  and  emo- 
tion of  the  people,  both  in  battle  and  in  council;  and, 
moreover,  not  only  were  the  ideas  themselves  of  com- 
manding power,  but  they  were  set  forth  in  words  and 
bodied  forth  in  institutions  by  great  characters.  Wash- 
ington's "Farewell  Address"  is  rightly  reckoned  a  monu- 
ment of  the  time  scarcely  inferior  in  dignity  to  the  two  in- 
struments that  preceded  it;  and  one  great  book  of  govern- 
ment, "The  Federalist,"  summed  up  the  broad  national 
thought. 

In  these  writings,  distinctively,  was  the  literary  out- 
burst of  life,  as  it  then  sought  expression  in  language, 
imagery,  and  ideas  of  public  liberty,  as  directly,  per- 
vasively, and  energetically  as  in  the  Puritan  common- 
wealth in  the  earlier  age  it  had  found  utterance  in  the 
language  and  imagery  and  ideals  of  the  Bible;  it  was  here 
as  thoroughly  political  as  it  had  before  been  religious; 
but  here,  too,  it  is  life  expressed  in  literature,  though  now 
the  form  is  original  and  indigenous.  The  first  great  con- 
tact of  life  and  letters  in  America  was  through  religious 
passion  in  inherited  forms  of  speech;  the  second  great 
contact  was  through  political  passion,  and  created  a  new 
literature  for  itself;  between  the  two  lay  the  literature, 
always  more  or  less  in  evidence,  describing  the  environ- 


146  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

ment  of  life  and  its  events  realistically,  or  summing  it  up 
in  history  or  annals.  Such,  in  few  words,  is  the  story 
of  the  interaction  of  American  life  and  letters  in  their 
vital  connection  in  the  colonial  times. 

Is  it  too  brief  a  tale,  too  scant  in  names  and  titles,  too 
little  diversified?  Does  it  slight  academic  definitions, 
preconceptions  of  the  bibliographer  and  antiquarian,  the 
received  traditions  of  our  colonial  literature  which  has  so 
swelled  in  bulk  by  the  labors  of  our  literary  historians 
in  the  last  thirty  years  of  local  research?  What  of  "The 
Day  of  Doom,"  "The  New  England  Primer,"  and  "Poor 
Richard's  Almanack,"  and  the  other  wooden  worthies  of 
our  Noah's  Ark,  survivors  from  the  Flood,  archaic  idols? 
These  are  relics  of  a  literary  fetichism.  They  do  not 
belong  with  the  books  that  become  the  classics  of  a  nation. 
They  are  not  necessarily  remembered.  Their  being  men- 
tioned at  all  denotes  the  scarcity  of  colonial  books  that 
can  be  brought,  even  by  charity,  under  the  head  of  liter- 
ature in  its  polite  sense. 

The  contact  of  the  colonists  with  elegant  letters,  as 
imported  from  England,  was  also  inconspicuous.  It  is 
true  that  William  Hathorne,  the  ancestor  of  the  romancer, 
brought  over  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  "Arcadia,"  and  the 
thought  of  that  stern  captain  and  orator  of  the  Puritan 
assembly  reading  the  lore  of  the  shepherd-knights  of  love 
in  the  far  different  wild  of  Salem,  fills  one  with  amaze- 
ment; but  the  fact  is  significant  of  the  kind  of  touch  with 
England  then  maintained,  and  not  through  the  scholars 
of  the  old-home  Cambridge  alone.  Spenser  was  also 
known,  and  Du  Bartas;  and,  as  time  went  on,  the  Puri- 
tan literature  came  over  —  Milton  and  Bunyan,  and  then 
Cowper,  the  characteristic  books  to  be  found  in  New 
England  homes  at  the  end  of  the  period,  and  long  after- 


THE   BEGINNINGS  147 

wards  the  familiar  books  of  the  house  there.  But  those 
who  felt  the  literary  impulse  from  the  imported  writings 
were  few  and  achieved  nothing;  gather  up  their  slender 
compositions  as  we  may  with  pious  care,  it  is  only  for 
reburial.  The  fertilizing  power  of  such  books  was  long 
delayed,  so  long  as  to  bring  the  English  eighteenth  cen- 
tury nearer  to  us  than  it  is  to  Englishmen;  for  Addison, 
who  first  was  felt  in  Irving,  is  still  perceptible  in  Curtis, 
and  Holmes  hardly  escaped  being  one  of  Pope's  imitators. 
It  is  only  one  hidebound  in  academic  prejudice  who  could 
treat  such  a  rill  of  Parnassus  as  imitative  colonial  verse, 
as  a  matter  of  any  importance  in  our  literature.  The 
people  were  a  prose  people,  who  had  both  their  practical 
and  spiritual  life  in  prose;  what  was  to  them  the  sub- 
stance of  poetry  in  their  lives  was  clothed  in  prose,  how- 
ever exalted  with  the  rhythm  of  deep,  natural  feeling; 
their  very  hymns  had  lost  the  sense  of  poetic  form.  They 
had,  in  truth,  forgotten  poetry;  the  perception  of  it  as  a 
noble  and  exquisite  form  of  language  had  gone  from  them, 
nor  did  it  come  back  till  Bryant  recaptured,  for  the  first 
time,  its  grander  lines  at  the  same  time  that  he  gave 
landscape  to  the  virgin  horizons  of  his  country. 

Slowly,  however,  the  ground  was  prepared  for  literature 
in  the  narrower  sense;  it  was  the  last  of  the  great  natural 
functions  of  a  civilized  State  to  revive  on  the  new  soil; 
even  now  it  is  only  with  reservations  that  it  can  be  said 
to  have  reached  the  dignity  of  a  distinct  profession  among 
us.  The  clergy  and  the  statesmen  used  it  only  as  a  tool 
in  their  own  crafts  for  ulterior  ends;  they  did  not  value 
it  as  an  art  capable  of  products  that  belong  only  to  itself. 
There  was  no  place  for  the  man  of  letters  in  the  social 
arrangement;  there  was  no  market  for  his  wares  in  the 
social  economy;  religious  and  political  ideals  were  sup- 


148  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

plied  in  abundance,  and  no  need  was  felt  for  other  ideals; 
and,  as  for  entertainment,  it  was  a  hard-working  world, 
this  young  America,  fully  employed  with  its  material 
tasks  in  subduing  the  soil,  advancing  the  border,  estab- 
lishing trade,  manufacture,  and  commerce,  founding  in- 
stitutions, planting  the  State  in  all  ways.  Communication 
spread  through  the  colonies,  which  drew  together,  but 
this  communication  was  ecclesiastical,  mercantile,  politi- 
cal; and,  in  fact,  it  was  scientific  before  it  was  literary. 
The  first  class,  too,  that  developed  wealth  was  a  burgher 
commercial  class,  whose  indulgence  was  in  articles  of 
costly  merchandise,  in  luxuries  of  the  house  and  dress, 
in  comfortable  living;  the  old  Tory  class,  materialized 
with  new  riches  and  interested  in  the  old  order  as  one  in 
which  they  were  substantial  citizens.  Letters  have  seldom 
flourished  in  such  an  environment.  It  was  not  until  the 
prosperous  times  after  the  Revolution,  in  a  wider  and 
more  varied  world,  that  signs  of  literary  consciousness 
can  be  discerned.  In  the  newspapers  there  began  to  be 
indications  of  literary  ambition,  and  in  the  publications 
that  were  late  fruits  of  the  periodical  movement  in  the 
English  eighteenth  century  there  were  signs  of  literary 
breeding,  but  the  minds  of  the  contributors  fed  on  the 
husks  of  a  foreign  taste.  The  presses  of  Philadelphia  and 
Wilmington  had  reprinted  English  books,  and  English 
radicalism  was  early  welcomed  and  had  a  living  contem- 
porary impetus;  Mary  Wollstonecraft's  books,  for  ex- 
ample, were  issued  and  had  influence. 

There  was  a  rapid  expansion  in  the  field  of  books; 
readers  increased  in  numbers;  a  demand  arose  for  works 
current  in  the  mother-country,  as  well  as  for  standard 
authors  of  the  closing  century.  Perhaps  the  clearest  sign 
of  the  coming  revival  was  to  be  seen  in  the  first  public 


THE   BEGINNINGS  149 

libraries,  called  social  libraries,  that  sprang  up  in  the  New 
England  coast  towns  and  were  considerable  collections 
for  general  use.  Their  catalogues  show  what  books  were 
read;  and,  while  they  contain  a  large  proportion  of  re- 
ligious works,  manuals  of  counsel  for  parents  and  youth, 
serious  meditative  discourses,  and  the  like,  they  are  also 
filled  with  travel,  history,  the  science  of  those  days,  the 
English  classic  poets  and  prose  writers,  and  are  not  des- 
titute of  jfiction  and  plays.  They  reveal  the  existence  of 
a  distinct  literary  attention  in  the  community,  which  was 
in  readiness  for  the  native  writers;  or,  if  they  failed  to 
arise,  these  little  libraries  would  breed  them.  What  was 
true  of  the  neighborhood  of  Boston  was  also  the  case  in 
other  local  centres  as  far  south  as  Philadelphia  at  least; 
the  reading  public,  interested  in  contemporary  books 
and  also  familiarized  with  the  traditional  higher  forms 
of  the  literary  art  —  essay,  tale,  and  poem  —  had 
come. 

The  first  appearance  of  an  American  spirit,  indigenous 
and  of  the  soil,  would  naturally  be  found  in  that  folk- 
literature  that  comes  with  printer's  ink  instead  of  with 
the  bardic  harp,  the  broadside  of  ballad  and  news;  but 
of  this  there  was  only  a  small  product,  chiefly  remembered 
by  the  ''Song  of  Braddock's  Men,"  the  ballad  of  ''Nathan 
Hale,''  "Yankee  Doodle,"  and  the  like;  and  no  popular 
writer  rose  out  of  it.  The  first  name  distinctly  literary 
was  that  of  Philip  Freneau,  whose  poems,  though  follow- 
ing the  manner  of  the  contemporary  English  school,  had 
American  color  in  their  subjects;  while  he  possessed 
literary  feeling,  he  had  no  distinction  except  as  a  solitary 
figure,  and  he  made  no  wide  appeal  to  his  countr)mien. 
Charles  Brockden  Brown,  the  earliest  American  novelist, 
was  of  a  much  stronger  native  fiber.    He  had  an  original 


ISO  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

impulse,  springing  from  his  times  and  his  environment, 
and  his  novels  were  localized  on  the  soil.  In  manner  he, 
too,  adopted  the  current  English  fashion,  and  yet  not 
slavishly,  but  with  a  purpose  to  reform  and  advance  it, 
and  put  it  to  new  uses.  He  made  a  conscious  attempt  to 
substitute  realism  for  romantic  supernaturalism,  and 
turned  from  the  Gothic  castle  and  the  ghost  to  quasi- 
scientific  phenomena,  such  as  ventriloquism,  somnam- 
bulism, and  clairvoyance,  for  the  magic  of  his  mystery, 
and  to  the  contemporary  things  of  America,  such  as  the 
Indian  and  the  yellow-fever  pest  in  New  York,  for  the 
substance  of  his  physical  background.  He  remained,  how- 
ever, too  closely  attached  to  the  pseudo-romantic  in  char- 
acter, and  was  too  much  interested  in  the  ideas  of 
Godwin's  English  radicalism,  to  be  able  to  break  out  a 
plain  human  story  from  the  shell  of  life  in  the  colonies, 
as  Miss  Edgeworth  did  in  the  case  of  Irish  and  Scott  in 
the  case  of  Scotch  life.  He  was  far  from  being  a  genius 
in  fiction;  but  American  traits,  things,  and  contemporary 
interests  are  strongly  marked  in  his  curiously  composite 
tales;  the  ferment  of  new  literary  life  is  in  them.  In  the 
elder  Richard  Henry  Dana,  who  held  a  similar  position 
in  the  New  England  center,  poetry  and  fiction  were 
blended,  but  neither  element  disclosed  American  origi- 
nality except  by  some  modification  of  his  English  ex- 
emplars in  respect  to  the  setting  of  his  works.  The 
character,  the  passion,  the  situation  are  still  of  the  pseudo- 
romantic  English  school,  which  was  the  tap-root  of 
Byronism  and  in  Dana  sent  out  a  wandering  shoot  over- 
sea. But  Freneau,  Brown,  and  Dana,  though  their  works 
are  long  forgotten,  illustrate  the  sort  of  literary  creation 
that  went  on  in  the  opening  of  the  New  World  to  the 
poetic  and  romantic  imagination  of  its  own  sons.    They 


THE   BEGINNINGS  151 

were  pioneers  of  the  literary  art  and  profession,  with 
habits  English-bred,  but  working  in  the  home  field. 

These  were  our  beginnings  in  the  life  which  a  people 
leads  through  books,  those  works  which  it  inherits  from 
the  fathers  and  those  which  it  creates  out  of  itself.  This 
life  lay  almost  exclusively  in  the  religious,  political,  and 
historic  fields;  it  was  only  with  the  generation  born  after 
the  Revolution  that  literature  was  practised  as  a  fine  art 
in  an  independent  and  original  way.  But  the  colonial 
generations  had  done  their  work,  and  the  time  was  ripe 
for  complete  life  on  the  scale  of  Western  civilization. 
They  had  planted  religion,  liberty,  and  letters,  which  are 
the  three  estates  of  a  great  nation;  and  literature  had 
been  their  instrument  in  each  phase  of  the  triple  task. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE    KNICKERBOCKER    ERA 

Father  Knickerbocker  was  the  first  literary  creation 
of  our  country.  The  little  old  man  in  the  old  black  coat 
and  cocked  hat,  who  strayed  from  his  lodgings  and  was 
near  being  advertised  for  by  the  police  of  that  day,  and 
who  left  behind  him  the  curious  history  that  was  to  be 
sold  for  his  debts,  was  destined  by  the  spirit  of  humor  to 
be  the  eldest  child  of  our  originality,  and  he  proved  his 
title-deeds  and  true  birth  so  well  that  the  estate  of  New 
York  proudly  received  and  owned  him  and  gave  him  the 
island  and  river  realm  and  took  to  itself  and  its  belongings 
the  name  of  its  droll  saint.  He  was  a  myth,  like  all  our 
types;  for  American  genius  has  never  yet  created  a  man 
or  woman  so  much  of  nature's  stamp  as  to  live  in  our 
memories  and  affections  like  one  of  ourselves,  as  Uncle 
Toby  or  Hamlet  or  Pickwick  does;  but,  like  all  true 
myths,  he  had  a  root  in  the  soil.  It  was  characteristically 
American,  premonitory  of  a  land  of  many  races,  that  this 
Dutch  grotesque,  so  pure  in  his  racial  strain  as  to  in- 
corporate all  the  old  traditional  blood  in  his  figure,  should 
have  issued  from  a  brain  half  Scotch  and  half  English, 
the  first-born  of  Irving's  invention;  but  Dietrich  Knicker- 
bocker could  hardly  have  seen  himself  with  Dutch  eyes, 
and  so  in  this  first  instance  it  was  the  blending  of  the 
stocks  that  gave  literary  consciousness  and  set  up  the 
reactions  that  breed  imagination  and  humor. 

The  city,  nevertheless,  was  pure-blooded  in  these  early 
days,  at  least  by  comparison  with  its  later  conglomera- 

152 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  153 

tions;  and  it  was,  in  fact,  the  expression  of  local  pride 
and  race  dignity  in  Dr.  Mitchell's  'Ticture  of  New  York" 
that  gave  occasion  to  the  graceless  half-breed,  this  young 
Irving,  to  amuse  himself  and  the  town  with  its  author's 
vanity  and  heaviness.  "The  Knickerbocker  History"  was 
the  sort  of  broad  travesty  that  the  victim  calls  coarse 
caricature,  and  it  might  not  have  survived  so  long  and 
so  acceptably  if  the  victorious  English  race  had  not  grown 
with  the  city  and  continued  the  local  temper  that  most 
enjoyed  the  humor.  Certainly  the  old  Dutch  town  can- 
not be  credited  with  producing  Irving,  except  on  the 
theory  of  opposites;  it  furnished  the  material,  but  the 
hand  that  wrought  it  was  English  by  blood  and  breeding. 
It  belonged  to  the  situation  that  the  observer  should  be 
of  a  different  kind;  the  subject  gained  by  his  aloofness 
from  it.  If  one  to  the  manner  born  could  never  have 
seen  the  broad  humor  of  it,  neither  could  he  have  touched 
the  Knickerbocker  world  with  that  luminous  sentiment 
which  by  another  smile  of  fortune  made  Rip  Van  Winkle 
immortal.  Individuality  has  played  an  uncommonly  large 
part  in  our  literature,  and  its  part  is  always  greater  than 
is  usually  allowed;  and,  after  all,  Irving  created  this  past; 
he  was  the  medium  through  whom  it  became  visible;  and 
it  still  lies  there  in  the  atmosphere  of  his  genius  not  in  the 
crudity  of  its  own  by-gone  fact.  He  found  the  old  Dutch 
life  there  in  the  city  and  up  and  down  the  waterways  in 
his  cheerful,  tender,  and  warm  youth;  he  laughed  at  it 
and  smiled  on  it;  and  what  it  was  to  his  imagination  it 
came  to  be  as  reality  almost  historic  to  his  countrymen. 

It  is  all  a  colonial  dream,  like  Longfellow's  "Acadie," 
and  the  witchery  of  literature  has  changed  it  into  an  hori- 
zon of  our  past,  where  it  broods  forever  over  the  reaches 
of  the  Hudson  northward.    Hawthorne's  Puritan  past  is 


154  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

not  more  evasive;  but  a  broad  difference  is  marked  by  the 
contrast  of  "The  Scarlet  Letter"  and  "The  Legend  of 
^leepy  Hollow";  the  absence  of  the  moral  element  is  felt 
•  in  the  latter;  and  a  grosser  habit  of  life,  creature  comfort, 
a  harmless  but  unspiritual  superstition,  a  human  warmth, 
a  social  comradery,  are  prominent  in  Irving's  lucubra- 
tions, and  these  are  traits  of  the  community  ripened  and 
sweetened  in  him.  Irving  must  have  been  a  charming 
boy,  and  in  his  young  days  he  laid  the  bases  of  his  life  in 
good  cheer,  happy  cordiality,  the  amiableness  of  a  sensi- 
tive and  pleasurable  temperament,  which  he  developed  in 
the  kindly  and  hospitable  homes  of  the  city.  He  was 
all  his  days  a  social  creature,  and  loved  society,  masculine 
and  feminine;  and  going  from  New  York  to  a  long  Eu- 
ropean experience  of  social  life  he  returned  to  be  one  of 
the  finest  types  of  a  man  so  bred,  fit  to  be  one  of  the 
historic  literary  figures  of  a  commercial  and  cosmopolitan 
city. 

Irving,  however,  thorough  American  of  his  day  though 
he  was,  bore  but  little  relation  to  the  life  of  the  nation. 
He  was  indebted  to  his  country  for  some  impulses  of  his 
genius  and  much  material  which  he  reworked  into  books; 
but  he  gave  more  than  he  received.  Our  early  literary 
poverty  is  illustrated  by  the  gifts  he  brought.  He  was  a 
pioneer  of  letters,  but  our  literary  pioneers  instead  of 
penetrating  further  into  the  virgin  wilderness  had  to  hark 
back  to  the  old  lands  and  come  again  with  piratical  treas- 
ures; and  in  this  he  was  only  the  first  of  a  long  line  of 
continental  adventurers.  Much  of  American  literary  ex- 
perience, which  comes  to  us  in  our  few  classics,  was 
gained  on  foreign  soil;  and,  in  fact,  it  must  be  acknowl- 
edged that,  like  some  young  wines,  American  genius  has 
been  much  improved  by  crossing  the  seas.    Irving  was  the 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  155 

first  example.  Commerce  naturally  leads  to  travel,  and 
he  went  out  as  a  man  in  trade  to  stay  a  few  months.  He 
remained  seventeen  years.  It  was  not  merely  that  he 
received  there  an  aristocratic  social  training  and  oppor- 
tunity peculiarly  adapted  to  ripen  his  graces  —  and  the 
graces  of  his  style  and  nature  are  essentially  social  graces 
—  but  subjects  were  given  to  him  and  his  sympathies 
drawn  out  and  loosed  by  both  his  English  and  his  Spanish 
residences. 

Sentiment  and  romance  were  more  to  him  than  humor, 
and  grew  to  be  more  with  years;  and  in  the  old  lands  his 
mind  found  that  to  cling  to  and  clamber  over  which  other- 
wise might  not  have  come  to  support  his  wandering  and 
sjmipathetic  mood.  Genius  he  had,  the  nature  and  the 
faculty  of  an  imaginative  writer;  what  he  needed  was  not 
power  but  opportunity;  and  at  every  new  chance  of  life 
he  answered  to  the  time  and  place  and  succeeded.  He 
alone  of  men  not  English-born  has  added  fascination  to 
English  shrines,  and  given  them  that  new  light  that  the 
poet  brings;  and  he  has  linked  his  name  indissolubly  for 
all  English-reading  people  with  the  Alhambra  and 
Granada.  It  was  because  of  his  American  birth  that  he 
wrote  of  Columbus,  and  perhaps  some  subtle  imaginative 
sympathy  always  underlies  the  attraction  of  Spain,  which 
is  so  marked,  for  American  writers;  but  it  was  not  un- 
fitting that  in  his  volumes  of  travel  sketches  the  romantic 
after-glow  of  Spain  should  bloom  in  our  western  sky.  By 
such  works,  more  than  by  his  English  sketches,  which 
will  always  seem  an  undivided  part  of  English  literature, 
he  gave  to  our  early  literature  a  romantic  horizon,  though 
found  in  the  history  and  legend  of  a  far  country,  which 
it  had  hitherto  lacked;  and  it  is  a  striking  phenomenon  to 
find  our  writers,  on  whom  the  skies  shut  down  round  the 


IS6  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

shores  of  the  New  World,  lifting  up  and  opening  out  these 
prospects  into  the  picturesque  distance  of  earth's  space 
and  the  romantic  remoteness  of  history,  as  if  our  literary 
genius  were  gone  on  a  voyage  of  discovery.  It  shows  the 
expansion  of  the  national  mind,  the  cessation  of  the 
^'  exiguous  exile  of  the  colonial  days,  the  beginning  of  our 
reunion  with  the  nations  of  the  world,  which  still  goes  on; 
and  in  this  reunion,  necessary  for  our  oneness  with  man, 
literature  led  the  way  in  these  romantic  affections  of  our 
traveled  man  of  letters,  Irving,  in  whose  wake  the  others 
followed. 

The  third  point  of  contact  that  Irving's  genius  found 
with  the  larger  life  of  his  native  land  was  in  the  realm  of 
exploration.  It  was  long  now  since  the  human  tide  had 
swept  from  the  shores  and  inlets  of  the  sea  through  the 
great  forests  and  down  the  Appalachian  slopes  and  broken 
in  broad  streams  upon  the  open  prairie;  and  the  adven- 
turers were  already  threading  the  thin  trails  of  the  desert 
and  high  mountain  solitudes.  Here  was  the  new  and  un- 
used material  of  national  experience,  and  to  this  day  its 
riches  have  gone  to  waste,  so  far  as  literature  is  concerned. 
Irving,  however,  on  his  late  return  home,  was  struck  with 
admiration  at  the  vast  progress  made  into  the  Western 
wilderness,  and  he  perceived  its  literary  utility.  A  journey 
he  made  in  the  Southwest  gave  him  the  near  view  he  al- 
ways needed  to  stimulate  his  descriptive  power  and  to  wake 
his  eye  for  incident,  and  in  his  "Tour  of  the  Prairies" 
he  wrote  down  our  best  literary  impression  of  the  actual 
scene.  It  is  no  more  than  a  traveler's  journal,  but  it 
remains  unique  and  interesting.  Unfortunately  his  tem- 
perament was  not  such  as  to  respond  with  creative  power 
over  this  new  world.  The  theme  did  not  pass  beyond  the 
realistic  stage  of  treatment,  just  as  in  the  case  of  Poe, 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  157 

who  also  saw  the  subject  in  his  "Julius  Rodman,"  though 
living's  handling  far  surpasses  Poe's  by  virtue  of  his  per- 
sonality and  the  charm  that  radiates  from  it.  Even  less 
in  "Astoria"  and  "Captain  Bonneville"  did  Irving  win 
the  heart  from  this  Western  mystery.  The  matter  re- 
mained crude,  fine  in  its  facts,  but  unimaginative,  un- 
wakened,  unbreathed  on  by  the  spirit  that  giveth  life. 
The  Americanization  of  the  wilderness  was  going  on,  but 
its  literature  was  like  that  of  the  settlement  of  the  coast 
in  the  earlier  time,  a  mass  of  contemporary,  rudely  re- 
corded experience  and  memory;  the  routes  of  the  fur- 
traders  still  led  only  to  and  from  the  As  tor  counting-room; 
Irving  observed  and  noted,  and  made  a  book  or  two  of 
the  discovery,  but  his  imagination  was  not  of  the  sort  to 
draw  out  the  romance  of  it,  for  it  had  no  element  of  the 
past,  and  the  past  was  his  mother  Muse. 

It  was  the  second  writer  who  sprang  up  in  the  old  city 
of  New  York,  Cooper,  who  was  to  create  in  this  broad 
field  of  national  expansion,  though  in  narrowly  limited 
ways  far  from  adequate  to  the  vast  sweep  and  variety  of 
its  immensely  efficient  life.  Cooper  subdued  for  literature 
the  forest  and  the  sea  and  brought  them  into  the  mind's 
domain,  but  it  was  rather  as  parts  of  nature  than  as  the 
theater  of  men.  The  power  of  the  scenery  is  most  felt 
in  his  work  and  prevails  over  the  human  element.  It  is 
just  perspective,  nevertheless,  and  true  to  the  emotion  of 
the  time  and  place. 

He  began  very  naturally.  His  first  interest  was  in 
character,  the  personality  that  he  immortalized  as  Harvey 
Birch,  and  in  the  events  so  near  in  memory  to  him  and 
so  close  in  locality,  the  Revolutionary  scene  as  it  was  in 
Westchester;  and  out  of  these  he  made  a  historical  tale 
that  was  the  corner-stone  of  a  great  literary  reputation. 


158  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

But  it  was  not  long  before  he  went  deeper  into  the  sources 
of  his  own  experience  for  theme  and  feeling,  and  his  most 
characteristic  work  was  a  part  of  himself,  of  that  self 
which  had  shared  most  widely  in  the  novel  and  broad 
experience  of  American  life.  He  had  grown  up  under 
the  shadow  of  the  wild  forest  and  in  the  sunlight  of  the 
lake  and  clearing,  in  close  contact  with  nature  all  his 
boyish  days;  familiarity  with  the  forest  gave  him  at  a 
later  time  of  youth  the  open  secret  of  the  sea,  so  much 
the  same  are  the  ground  tones  of  nature;  and  ceasing  to 
be  midshipman  and  lieutenant,  he  had,  so  to  speak,  made 
the  rounds  of  the  great  elements  in  whose  primitive  sim- 
plicities he  set  his  story.  There  was  something  of  the 
artist  in  him,  but  nothing  of  the  poet,  and  he  felt  the 
impressiveness  of  nature,  its  oppositions  to  society  and 
law  and  man,  as  our  common  humanity  feels  them,  not 
in  Wordsworthian  aloofness  and  spiritual  interpretation, 
but  as  a  real  presence,  an  actuality,  a  thing  of  fact.  His 
popular  vogue  in  France  was  prepared  for  him  by  a  pre- 
established  harmony  between  the  eloquent  French  dream 
of  the  life  of  nature  and  his  narrative  where  nature  still 
brooded  as  in  a  lake,  so  near  was  he  to  her  presence;  but 
what  was  to  the  foreigner  a  new  Arcadia  only,  an  illusion 
of  the  heart,  was  to  him  a  living  world. 

Being  a  novelist,  he  concentrated  this  vague  emotion  of 
the  free  majesty  of  nature  in  a  character  of  fiction, 
Leatherstocking,  one  of  the  great,  original  t)rpes  of  ro- 
manticism in  the  past  century.  Yet  Leatherstocking, 
like  Knickerbocker,  is  pure  myth,  with  a  root  in  the  soil, 
too,  an  incarnation  of  the  forest-border,  a  blend  of  nature 
and  man  in  a  human  form,  thoroughly  vitalized,  impres- 
sive, emotional,  an  ideal  figure.  It  is  characteristic  of 
our  greater  writers,  even  our  humorists,  to  be  nearer  to 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  159 

the  American  idea  than  to  anything  concretely  American. 
The  infusion  of  grandeur  —  the  word  is  not  inappropriate 

—  in  Cooper's  work  is  what  gives  it  distinction,  and  most 
in  its  most  imaginative  portions.  It  is  true  that  he  in- 
vented the  sea-novel,  as  was  not  unnatural,  in  view  of  his 
experience  of  our  maritime  life  and  of  the  great  place  of 
that  life  in  our  national  activity  and  consciousness;  and 
he  used  colonial,  revolutionary,  and  border  history  out 
of  our  stores  to  weave  incident,  plot,  and  scene;  but  it  is 
not  these  things  that  make  him  national,  but  the  Ameri- 
can breath  that  fills  his  works;  and  where  this  is  least 
the  scene  grows  mean,  petty,  awkward,  inept,  feeble;  and 
where  it  is  greatest  there  the  life  is  found  —  in  "The 
Pathfinder,"  "The  Deerslayer,"  "The  Prairie."  He  was 
abroad,  like  Irving,  for  many  years,  and  gained  thereby 

—  perhaps  through  contrast  and  detachment  merely  — 
a  truer  conception  and  deeper  admiration  of  democracy, 
its  principles,  aims,  and  energies;  but  he  was  national 
where  Irving  was  international,  and  if  Irving  in  his 
literary  relation  to  his  country,  is  rather  thought  of  as 
an  influence  upon  it.  Cooper  was  its  effluence,  the  Ameri- 
can spirit  in  forest,  sea,  and  man  taking  on  form,  feature, 
and  emotion  first  in  his  world,  sentimentalized,  idealized, 
pictorial  though  it  was.  The  best  that  literature  achieves 
is  a  new  dream;  this  was  the  first  dream  of  American  life, 
broad  and  various,  in  its  great  new  solitudes  of  sea  and 
land. 

Irving  and  Cooper  were  the  two  writers  of  the  first 
rank  in  our  letters.  Strangely  contrasted  in  their  careers 
as  well  as  in  character,  and  curiously  overlapping  in  their 
experience  and  writings,  neither  of  them  was  a  true 
product  of  New  York,  or  bound  to  it,  except  in  ephemeral 
ways.    The  one  beloved;  the  other  hated,  their  reputa- 


i6o  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

tions  were  alike  national.  American  literature,  which  was 
in  no  sense  provincial,  began  with  them.  A  third  great 
name,  which  is  as  large  in  tradition,  at  least,  is  linked 
with  theirs  in  the  city's  literary  fame.  Bryant  was  a 
New-Englander  by  birth,  and  remained  one  in  nature  all 
his  life,  but  his  name  lingers  where  he  had  his  career,  in 
the  metropolis.  It  belongs  to  a  city  in  which  of  all  the 
cities  of  the  earth  nativity  is  the  least  seal  of  citizenship 
to  appropriate  justly  the  works  of  its  foster-children;  and 
Bryant  illustrates,  as  a  New-Yorker,  its  assimilation  of 
the  sons  of  all  the  nation.  In  the  Niagara  of  life  that 
forever  pours  into  its  vast  human  basin,  there  has  been  a 
constant  current  from  New  England,  important  in  the 
city's  life  and  control.  What  Beecher  was  in  religion, 
Bryant  was  in  poetry  —  an  infusion  of  highly  liberalized 
moral  power.  Irving  said  there  was  nothing  Puritanical 
in  himself,  nor  had  he  any  sympathy  with  Puritanism; 
and  Cooper  hated  the  New  England  type,  though  he  was 
pietistic  to  an  uncommon  degree.  Between  them  they 
represented  the  temper  of  the  New  York  community  on 
both  its  worldly  and  evangelical  side.  Bryant,  however, 
offers  a  sharp  contrast  to  them,  for  he  had  precisely  that 
depth  of  moral  power  that  was  his  heritage  from  Puri- 
tanism, and  marked  in  the  next  generation  the  literature 
of  New  England,  setting  it  off  from  the  literature  of  New 
York.  Depth,  penetration,  intensity,  all  that  religious 
fervor  fosters  and  spirituality  develops,  was  what  Irving 
and  Cooper  could  lay  no  claim  to.  In  Bryant  something 
of  this,  in  an  early,  primitive,  and  simple  form  of  lib- 
eralism, came  into  the  city,  though  it  was  not  naturalized 
there.  So  lonely  is  it,  indeed,  that  it  is  almost  impossible 
for  the  mind  to  identify  Bryant  the  poet  with  Bryant  the 
editor.    He  himself  kept  the  two  lives  distinct,  and  his 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  i6i 

distance  and  coldness  marked  the  aloofness  of  the  poet 
in  him  from,  the  world  about  him. 

It  is  hard  in  any  case  to  localize  Bryant  not  merely  in 
the  city,  but  in  America,  because  he  is  so  elemental  in  his 
natural  piety.  That  something  Druidical  which  there  is 
in  his  aspect  sets  him  apart;  he  was  in  his  verse  a  seer, 
or  what  we  fancy  a  seer  to  be,  a  priest  of  the  holy  affec- 
tions of  the  heart  in  communion  with  nature's  God,  one 
whose  point  of  view  and  attitude  suggest  the  early  minis- 
trations of  adoring  Magians,  the  intuitions  of  Indian 
sages,  or  the  meditations  of  Greek  philosophers.  A  sensi- 
tive mind  can  hardly  rid  itself  of  this  old-world,  or  early- 
world,  impression  in  respect  to  Bryant.  The  hills  and 
skies  of  Berkshire  had  roofed  a  temple  for  him,  and  the 
forest  aisled  it,  and  wherever  he  moved  he  was  within  the 
divine  precincts.  Eternity  was  always  in  the  same  room 
with  him.  It  was  this  sense  of  grandeur  in  nature  and 
man,  the  perpetual  presence  of  a  cosmic  relation,  that 
dignified  his  verse  and  made  its  large  impression;  even 
his  little  blue  gentian  has  the  atmosphere  of  the  whole 
sky.  He  was  a  master  of  true  style,  as  refined  in  its 
plainness  as  was  Irving's  in  its  grace.  If  he  was  not 
national  in  a  comprehensive  sense,  he  was  national  in  the 
sense  that  something  that  went  to  the  making  of  the  na- 
tion went  to  the  making  of  him;  the  New  England  stock 
which  had  spread  into  the  West  and  veined  the  continent 
with  its  spirit,  as  ore  veins  the  rock,  was  of  the  same  stuff 
as  himself,  and  the  race  manifestation  of  its  fundamental 
religious  feeling  in  his  pure  and  uncovenanted  poetry  was 
the  same  as  in  Channing's  universality.  Present  taste 
may  forget  his  work  for  a  time,  but  its  old  American  spirit 
has  the  lasting  power  of  a  horizon  peak;  from  those  up- 
lands we  came,  and  some  of  the  songs  heard  there  the  na- 


i62  AMERICA  IN   LITERATURE 

tion  will  carry  in  its  heart.  He  was  the  last  of  the  early 
triad  of  our  greater  writers,  and  his  presence  is  still  a 
memory  in  the  city  streets;  but  the  city  that  was  greater 
for  his  presence,  as  for  Irving  and  Cooper,  who  had 
passed  away  before  him,  is  also  greater  for  their  memory. 

Between  the  major  and  the  lesser  gods  of  the  city  there 
is  a  great  gulf  fixed.  Irving,  Cooper,  and  Bryant  were 
on  the  American  scale  —  they  were  national  figures. 
There  were  almost  none  who  could  be  described  as  second 
to  them.  Every  metropolis,  however,  breeds  its  own  race 
of  local  writers,  like  mites  in  a  cheese,  numerous  and 
active,  the  literary  coteries  of  their  moment.  To  name 
one  of  them,  there  was  Willis;  he  was  gigantic  in  his 
contemporaneousness.  He  is  shrunk  now,  as  forgotten  as 
a  fashion-plate,  though  once  the  cynosure  of  the  literary 
town.  He  was  the  man  that  Irving,  by  his  richer  nature, 
escaped  being,  the  talented,  clever,  frivolous,  sentimental, 
graceful  artifice  of  a  man,  the  town-gentleman  of  litera- 
ture; he  was  the  male  counterpart  of  Fanny  Fern  and 
Grace  Greenwood;  he  outlasted  his  vogue,  like  an  old 
beau,  and  was  the  superannuated  literary  journalist.  Yet 
in  no  other  city  was  he  so  much  at  home  as  here,  and  in 
the  memoirs  of  the  town  he  would  fill  a  picturesque  and 
rightful  place.  A  court  would  have  embalmed  him,  but 
in  a  democracy  his  oblivion  is  sealed. 

One  or  two  other  early  names  had  a  sad  fortune  in 
other  ways.  Drake  and  Halleck  stand  for  our  boyish  pre- 
cocity; death  nipped  the  one,  trade  sterilized  the  other; 
there  is  a  mortuary  suggestion  in  the  memory  of  both. 
Halleck  long  survived,  a  fine  outside  of  a  man,  with  the 
ghost  of  a  dead  poet  stalking  about  in  him,  a  curious 
experience  to  those  who  met  him,  with  his  old-fashioned 
courtesy  and  the  wonder  of  his  unliterary  survival.    Of 


THE    KNICKERBOCKER    ERA  163 

the  elder  generation  these  are  the  names  that  bring  back 
the  old  times,  Willis,  Drake,  and  Halleck;  and  they  all 
suggest  the  community  in  a  more  neighborly  way  than 
the  national  writers. 

There  was  a  culture  in  the  old  city  which  bred  them, 
and  a  taste  for  letters  such  as  grows  up  where  there  are 
educated  men  of  the  professions  and  a  college  to  breed 
them.  The  slight  influence  of  Columbia,  however,  and 
the  main  fact  that  it  developed  professional  and  technical 
schools  instead  of  academic  power,  point  to  the  controlling 
factor  in  the  city's  life,  its  preoccupation  with  practical 
and  material  interests.  Literature  was  bound  in  such  a 
modern  community  to  be  bottomed  on  commerce;  what- 
ever else  it  might  be,  it  was  first  an  article  of  trade  to  be 
used  as  news,  circulated  in  magazines,  sold  in  books.  It 
has  become,  at  present,  largely  an  incident  of  advertising. 
New  York  was  a  great  distributing  center,  and  editors, 
publishers,  and  writers  multiplied  exceedingly.  The  re- 
sult was  as  inevitable  here  as  in  London  or  Paris,  but  the 
absence  of  a  literary  past  and  of  a  society  of  high-bred 
variety  made  a  vast  difference  in  the  tone  and  in  the 
product.  Parnassus  became  a  receding  sentimental 
memory,  fit  for  a  child's  wonder-book  like  Hawthorne's; 
but  Bohemia  was  thronged,  and  its  denizens  grew  like 
mushrooms  in  a  cellar.  There  was,  too,  from  the  beginning, 
something  bibulous  and  carnivorous  in  the  current  lit- 
erary life;  the  salon  did  not  flourish,  but  there  was  always 
a  Bread-and-Cheese  Club;  and,  indeed,  from  the  days  of 
Irving's  youthful  suppers,  the  literary  legend  of  the  city, 
not  excluding  its  greater  names,  might  be  interestingly 
and  continuously  told  by  a  series  of  memoirs  of  its  con- 
vivial haunts.  The  men  who  frequented  them  and  kept 
each  other  in  countenance  were  as  mortal,  for  the  most 


i64  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

part,  as  Pfaff's,  once  the  Mermaid  Tavern  of  the  town- 
wits.  Such  resorts,  too,  are  hot-houses  for  the  develop- 
ment of  clever  lads;  and  literature  suffered  by  the 
over-production  of  small  minds.  When  in  the  history  of 
letters  gregariousness  begins,  one  may  look  out  for  medi- 
ocrity. Great  writers  have  found  themselves  in  exile,  in 
prison,  in  solitudes  of  all  sorts;  and  great  books  are  es- 
pecially written  in  the  country.  Literature,  too,  is  nat- 
urally exogamous;  it  marries  with  the  remote,  the  foreign, 
the  strange,  and  requires  to  be  fertilized  from  without; 
but  Bohemia,  shut  in  its  own  petty  frivolities,  breeds  the 
race  of  those  manikins  of  Manhattan  whose  fame  Holmes 
gibed  at  as  having  reached  Harlem.  Open  Griswold  and 
find  their  works;  open  Poe's  "Literati"  and  find  their  epi- 
taphs; of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  the  Bohemians  the  world 
over.  Such  a  race  is  incidental  to  a  metropolitan  litera- 
ture; nor  were  they  altogether  inferior  men;  many  of 
them  led  useful  lives  and  won  local  eminence;  some  even 
achieved  the  honors  of  diplomacy.  They  contributed 
much  to  their  own  gaiety  and  enlivened  life  with  mutual 
admiration  and  contempt.  Poe  stirred  up  the  swarm  con- 
siderably. But  no  satire  embalmed  them  in  amber,  and 
they  are  forgotten  even  by  their  own  successors. 

The  city  grew  to  be,  through  these  middle  years  of 
the  century,  an  ever-increasing  mart  of  literary  trade. 
The  people,  with  their  schools  and  Sunday-schools  and 
habits  of  home-reading,  were  to  be  supplied  with  infor- 
mation and  entertainment,  and  New  York,  like  Phila- 
delphia, became  a  great  manufactory  of  books.  The  law 
of  demand  and  supply,  however,  has  a  limited  scope  in 
literature;  it  can  develop  quantity  but  not  quality.  Text- 
books, encyclopedias,  popular  knowledge,  travel,  and 
story  all  spawned  in  great  numbers,  but  the  literature  of 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  165 

creation  and  culture  continued  to  be  sparse.  It  might 
have  been  thought  that  the  literature  of  amusement,  at 
least,  would  have  flourished,  and  songs  and  plays  have 
abounded;  in  fact,  they  did  not  exist  except  in  the 
mediocre  state.  This  infertility  of  the  metropolis  in  the 
lasting  forms  of  literature  brings  home  to  us  the  almost 
incredible  famine  of  the  time  more  sharply  than  even  the 
tales  that  are  told  of  the  lack  of  expectation  of  any  ap- 
preciation felt  by  the  first  great  writers. 

Irving's  discovery  that  he  could  live  by  literature  was 
a  surprise  to  him;  he  had  begun  with  an  experiment 
rather  than  an  ambition,  and,  having  thus  found  his 
humor,  he  went  on  to  make  trial  of  sentiment,  pathos, 
and  romance.  Cooper  had  no  confidence  —  scarcely  a 
hope  —  that  an  American  novel  would  be  accepted  by 
his  own  countrymen.  They  had  become  so  used  to  their 
lack  of  native  productions  as  to  mistake  it  for  a  perma- 
nent state.  It  was  almost  an  accident  that  Cooper  ever 
finished  "The  Spy,"  and  he  did  it  in  the  scorn  of 
circumstance. 

The  success  of  the  greater  writers  was  immediate  and 
great;  the  city  gave  them  dinners  and  has  reared  their 
statues,  and  was  proud  of  them  at  the  time  in  a  truly 
civic  way;  but  a  cold  obstruction  of  genius  has  set  in 
ever  since.  The  lesser  writers  approached  them  only  on 
their  feeblest  side.  Perhaps  the  bulk  of  emotional  writing 
in  every  kind  was  of  the  sentimental  sort.  The  men  pro- 
duced a  good  deal  of  it,  but  the  women  reveled  and 
languished  in  it.  "Ben  Bolt,"  the  popular  concert-hall 
tune  of  its  day,  was  a  fair  example  of  its  masculine  form; 
and  such  writers  as  Mrs.  Osgood  and  the  Cary  sisters 
illustrate  its  feminine  modes.  Sentimentality  is  apt  to 
seem  very  foolish  to  the  next  generation  in  its  words; 


i66  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

but  in  character  it  survives  with  a  more  realistic  impres- 
sion; and  in  Poe,  in  his  relations  to  these  literary  women, 
one  sees  the  contemporary  t57pe.  He  was  mated  with 
Willis  as  the  dark  with  the  sunny,  and  as  misery  with 
mirth.  He  enchanted  the  poetesses  and  was  enchanted, 
finding  in  each  one  a  new  lost  Lenore.  All  his  female 
figures,  in  their  slightly  varied  monotone,  Annabel  and 
Annie,  are  in  the  realm  of  this  sentimentality  gone 
maudlin  in  him  as  it  had  gone  silly  in  others.  It  was  most 
wholesome  when  it  stayed  nearest  to  nature  and  domestic 
life;  but  there,  too,  it  was  feeble  and  lachrymose.  The 
breath  of  the  civil  war  put  an  end  to  it  for  the  time;  but 
even  that  great  passion  left  few  traces  of  itself  in  our 
letters.  The  writings  of  Dickens  favored  sentimentality, 
and  much  more  the  poems  of  Mrs.  Browning  and  the 
early  verse  of  Tennyson.  We  had  our  'little  Dickenses," 
but  it  is  significant  of  the  temperament  of  our  literature 
that  we  had  not  even  a  "little"  Thackeray.  Just  above 
this  level  there  was  here  and  there  a  cultivated  author, 
reminiscent  of  sentiment  in  its  purer  forms  —  of  Lamb 
and  Irving,  for  example  —  of  whose  small  number  Curtis 
stands  eminent  for  cheerfulness,  intrinsic  winningness, 
and  unfailing  grace.  He  was  the  last  of  the  line  that 
began  with  Irving,  through  which  the  literary  history  of 
the  city  can  be  traced  as  if  in  lineal  descent.  In  him 
sentiment  was  what  it  should  always  be  —  a  touch,  not 
the  element  itself. 

It  is  quite  in  the  order  of  things  that  in  a  literature  so 
purely  romantic  as  our  own  has  been  in  the  greater 
writers,  sentimentality  should  characterize  those  of  lesser 
rank,  for  it  naturally  attends  romanticism  as  an  inferior 
satellite.  It  has  all  vanished  now,  and  left  Lenore  and 
Annie  and  Annabel  its  lone  survivors.     We  are  a  ro- 


THE   KNICKERBOCKER   ERA  167 

mantic  and  sentimental  nation,  as  is  well  known,  and  we 
are  also  a  nation  of  efficiency.  The  literary  energies  of 
the  nation,  apart  from  its  genius,  have  been  immense  in 
reality;  they  have  gone  almost  wholly  into  popular  edu- 
cation in  its  varied  forms,  and  in  no  city  upon  such  a 
scale  as  in  New  York.  The  magazines  and  the  great 
dailies  exhibit  this  activity  in  the  most  striking  ways,  both 
for  variety  and  distinction;  and  on  the  side  of  literature, 
in  the  usual  sense,  from  the  days  of  the  old  "Mirror," 
"Knickerbocker,"  and  "Democratic"  the  growth  has  been 
steady,  and  has  carried  periodical  writing  to  its  height  of 
popular  efficiency  both  for  compass  and  power.  The 
multitude  of  writers  in  the  service  have  been  substantially 
occupied  with  the  production  of  news  in  the  broadest 
sense.  The  poem  and  the  essay  have  been  rather  things 
conceded  than  demanded,  and  make  but  a  small  part  in 
the  whole;  but  the  news  of  the  artistic,  literary,  and 
scientific  worlds  —  fact,  event,  personality,  theory,  and 
performance  —  all  this  has  been  provided  in  great  bulk. 
The  writers  strive  to  engage  attention,  to  interest;  and 
the  matter  of  prime  interest  in  such  a  city  is  the  news  of 
the  various  world.  Even  in  the  imaginative  field  some- 
thing of  the  same  sort  is  to  be  observed  in  the  usual 
themes  and  motives.  The  detective  story,  for  example, 
Japanese  or  other  foreign  backgrounds,  the  novel  of  ad- 
venture, and  travel  and  animal  sketches  and  the  like,  have 
an  element  of  news;  and  the  entire  popularization  of 
knowledge  belongs  in  the  same  region  of  interest. 
Thought,  reflection,  meditation,  except  on  political  and 
social  subjects,  does  not  flourish;  that  brooding  on  life 
and  experience,  out  of  which  the  greatest  literature 
emerges,  has  not  been  found,  whatever  the  reason  may 
be,  and,  in  fact,  it  is  rather  a  matter  of  original  endow- 


i68  AMERICA    IN   LITERATURE 

ment  than  of  the  environment.  The  literary  craft,  how- 
ever, if  it  lacked  genius,  has  been  characterized  by  facile 
and  versatile  talent,  and  its  product  has  been  very  great 
in  mass  and  of  vast  utility.  In  no  other  city  is  the  power 
of  the  printed  word  more  impressive.  The  true  literature 
of  the  city  is,  in  reality,  and  has  long  been,  its  great 
dailies;  they  are  for  the  later  time  what  the  sermons  of 
the  old  clergy  were  in  New  England  —  the  mental  sphere 
of  the  community  —  and  in  them  are  to  be  found  all  the 
elements  of  literature  except  the  qualities  that  secure 
permanence. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    LITERARY    AGE    OF     BOSTON 

Harvard  College  was  the  fountain-head  of  New  Eng- 
land literature.  Boston  would  have  been  an  interesting 
place  without  its  fructifying  neighbor,  such  was  its  civic 
stock;  with  its  double  lobe  of  Puritan  and  Pilgrim,  it 
would  have  been  the  brain  of  the  State,  a  mart  of  trade, 
and  a  nest  of  rebels,  but  hardly,  perhaps,  one  of  the  Httle, 
historic  Meccas  that  perpetually  challenge  the  real  impor- 
tance of  metropolitan  vastness;  and  in  the  hearts  of  its 
people,  at  least,  with  Florence  and  Edinburgh,  not  to  be 
profane  with  diviner  names,  Boston  brings  up  the  rear  of 
small  but  famous  towns.  Whatever  of  truth  there  is  in 
this  well-known  boast  comes  from  the  College.  It  hap- 
pened in  the  old  days,  long  before  Harvard  became  the 
high  altar  of  learning  it  now  is,  the  feeding  flame  of  mani- 
fold lofty  causes,  sacrosanct  with  honorable  lives  and  the 
votive  wealth  of  dying  generations  set  apart  for  the  dis- 
interested uses  of  men;  the  present  University,  with  its 
millions  of  money  devoted  to  the  unborn  millions  of  our 
people,  is  a  latter-day  miracle  with  its  own  future  all  be- 
fore it;  but  in  the  time  that  was,  in  the  two  centuries  of 
humbleness,  when  the  old  College  was  still  only  the  camp- 
fire  kindled  by  the  Muses  in  the  wilderness,  there  lies  an 
accomplished  past,  a  work  ended  and  done,  whose 
memory  most  survives  in  the  literary  fame  of  Boston. 

The  collegiate  spark,  which  is  now  parceled  out  among 
museums  and  laboratories,  and  feeds  an  immense  power- 

169 


I70  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

house  of  technical  arts,  applied  sciences,  and  lucrative 
professions,  was  then  rather  a  thing  of  men's  bosoms,  of 
the  instincts  of  imagination,  the  guesses  of  philosophy, 
the  intuitions  of  religion;  if  the  University,  through  the 
inculcation  of  scientific  knowledge  and  its  varied  training 
for  useful  pursuits,  has  now  become  more  a  great  prop  of 
the  material  state,  the  College  discharged  well  its  elder 
function  as  a  restorer  of  the  human  spirit  through  the 
seeking  of  truth;  and  under  its  plain  academic  rule,  before 
the  old  order  changed,  giving  place  to  new.  Harvard  came 
into  vital  touch  with  the  thoughts  of  men,  and  bore  once 
that  little,  unnoticed  flower  of  the  soul  whose  seeds  at 
last  are  blown  throughout  the  world.  It  began,  perhaps, 
in  the  time  of  Channing,  and  the  first  true  contact  may 
have  been  in  that  pure,  mild  spirit;  then  the  young  Emer- 
son left  the  pulpit,  the  young  Phillips  mounted  the  plat- 
form; outside  —  for  the  academic  race  is  never  more  than 
a  small  part  of  the  various  and  abounding  state  —  Garri- 
son struck  the  hour.  It  was  a  crude,  strange,  composite 
time.  The  phalanx  was  converging  on  Brook  Farm; 
dervishes  of  all  kinds  were  camping  round  the  Saadi  tent 
at  Concord;  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  and  Lowell  kept 
their  lettered  seclusion  undisturbed;  the  Lyceum  multi- 
plied like  a  torch  from  village  to  village;  and  the  new 
woman  of  the  period  had  grown  up  in  Margaret  Fuller, 
and,  in  fact,  in  Sophia  Peabody  and  Maria  White  she  was 
already  wedded  to  Hawthorne  and  Lowell.  It  was  the 
literary  age  of  Boston. 

The  traits  of  the  period  are  still  hard  to  grasp.  The 
immense  crudity  of  that  age  taxes  our  credulity,  and  at 
times  perplexes  us  by  arousing  the  sense  of  humor  instead 
of  exciting  the  organ  of  reverence.  "Thou  shalt  read 
Hafiz,"  says  Emerson,  as  he  lays  down  the  gospels;  and 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  171 

the  modern  reader  of  Hafiz  stands  aghast!  The  amazing 
contradictions  —  young  parsons  leaders  of  the  mob;  the 
naive  surprises  —  Lowell  as  a  temperance  lecturer  at  the 
*  picnic  where  Maria  White  as  queen  was  crowned  with 
a  coronal  of  pond-lilies;  the  suggestions,  now  of  a  deodor- 
ized Bohemia  at  Fresh  Pond,  or  the  Arcadia  of  married 
lovers  and  confirmed  hermits  at  Walden,  now  of  the 
milieu  of  the  ^'Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  and  again  of  some 
jete  champetre  in  Sterne  —  all  puzzle  the  ingenuous  and. 
unacclimated  mind.  The  provinciality  of  the  life  is  as 
fresh  and  startling,  and  as  humanly  interesting,  as  in  the 
work  of  great  novelists.  The  wonderful  rurality  of 
LowelPs  youth,  scarcely  guessed  even  by  his  biographers, 
is  one  extreme;  the  other  is,  let  us  say,  Allston,  returned 
from  abroad.  He  had  known  Coleridge.  What  a  figure 
he  wore  in  Cambridgeport!  Had  Jane  Austen  lived  her 
girlhood  at  Salem,  or  Peacock  passed  a  summer  at  Con- 
cord, what  delightful  mischief  might  have  been  ours  I 
What  an  enrichment  of  our  literature  in  eccentric  and 
ever-laughable  realism!  But  the  society  of  which  Allston 
was  an  ornament,  the  study  of  Ticknor,  the  dining-room  of 
Judge  Prescott,  the  counting-room  of  Francis  and  Thorn- 
dike,  the  court-room  of  Mason  and  Shaw,  would  have 
required  a  yet  more  masterly  hand.  We  get  glimpses  of 
it  in  memoirs  and  anecdotes,  but  the  scene  yet  waits  its 
author,  and  is  most  like  to  pass  away  without  a  poet.  Yet 
this  conservative,  commercial,  respectable  society  of  the 
traveled  and  home-keeping  provincials  is  the  background 
on  which  must  be  relieved  the  radicalism  of  Emerson  and 
Phillips,  the  elegance  of  Longfellow,  the  self-sufficiency 
of  Hawthorne,  the  manhood-worth  of  Whittier,  the 
Brahmin  pride  of  Holmes,  the  cleverness  of  Lowell.  If 
the  background  be  so  impossible  to  sketch,  still  more  is 


172  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

the  sway  and  jostle  of  the  contemporary  crowd.    Only  a 
few  impressions  are  firm  enough  to  be  put  down. 

Emerson  stands  the  foremost  figure.  In  him  the  spirit- 
uality of  New  England  culminated  and  was  so  blended 
with  practical  character  as  to  make  him  a  very  high  type 
of  his  race.  Spirituality  was  of  the  essence  of  New  Eng- 
land from  its  birth,  and  underlies  its  historic  democracy 
as  the  things  of  eternity  underlie  the  things  of  time.  In 
the  earlier  age,  however,  the  soul-life  was  cramped  in 
archaisms  of  thought  and  breeding  and  all  expression  was 
in  stiffened  forms.  This  Puritan  past  impresses  our  minds 
now  very  much  as  Byzantine  art  affects  our  eyes  —  as  a 
thing  in  bonds.  It  is  real,  though  remote;  it  shrouds 
mysteries  of  religious  feeling  dark  to  us;  but,  above  all 
else,  it  seems  a  spirit  imprisoned.  Blake  might  so  have 
pictured  it  more  intelligibly  with  his  rude  strength;  a 
thing  gaunt,  tragic,  powerful,  one  of  the  Titan  forms  of 
human  suffering.  The  enlargement,  the  enfranchisement, 
the  new  sphere  of  light,  of  labor  and  prayer  had  come 
before  Emerson;  he  was  born  into  a  free  world.  The 
spread  of  Unitarianism  in  New  England  was  a  growth 
in  the  order  of  nature;  it  was  not  revolutionary;  it  was 
normal  development;  and  in  this  mental  expansion  and 
moral  softening,  in  the  amelioration  of  the  American  spirit 
in  all  ways,  which  Unitarianism  denoted  in  the  com- 
munity, Harvard  College  was  the  radiating  influence.  By 
his  collegiate,  clerical  fathers,  Emerson  was  in  the  first 
line  of  those  who  were  to  share  the  new  thought  and 
advance  the  new  practice.  The  work  of  Channing  and 
his  friends  is  not  to  be  forgotten,  but  in  the  lapse  of  time 
it  has  lost  distinction,  and  blurs  into  half-remembered 
things  like  ancestral  strains;  the  climax  of  the  liberal 
movement  was  in  Emerson's  genius,  and  there  shines, 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF   BOSTON  173 

concentrated,  a  white  light  of  the  spirit  for  a  long  age. 
He  was  a  pure  radical;  we  are  apt  to  forget  how  radical 
he  was.  Harvard  recoiled,  astounded  and  indignant  at 
the  son  she  had  borne;  yet  it  was  from  within  her  halls  — 
and  it  is  ever  to  be  remembered  for  Harvard  honor  — 
that  both  the  academic  and  the  religious  proclamation 
went  forth  from  his  lips,  in  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration 
and  the  Divinity  School  Address;  and,  however  the 
elders  might  disown  and  protest,  the  words  fell  on  good 
ground  in  the  hearts  of  youth  and  multiplied  sixty  and 
a  hundred  fold.  It  is  not  without  reason  that  the  Hall 
of  Philosophy  there  should  bear  his  name,  now  that  all 
old  controversies  have  fallen  asleep,  for  both  by  his  in- 
heritance from  the  past  and  his  influence  upon  the  Ameri- 
can world  Harvard  was  the  corner-stone  of  his  pure  and 
high  fame. 

But,  though  Harvard  and  the  things  of  Harvard  were 
the  essential  environment  of  Emerson,  and  he  was  the 
child  of  the  old  College  in  a  much  larger  sense  than  is 
usually  meant  by  that  phrase,  there  was  something  of 
much  greater  import  in  his  genius,  deeper,  fast-rooted 
in  what  lies  below  education,  intellect,  and  books,  some- 
thing communal  that  made  him  even  more  the  son  of  the 
soil,  one  of  the  people.  He  had  that  quality  of  race  which 
marks  the  aristocrat  in  the  real  sense  of  that  word,  whose 
abuse  has  almost  exiled  it  from  the  speech  of  truth.  What 
characterized  the  stock  shone  forth  in  him  highly  per- 
fected and  efficient,  in  the  form  of  character,  on  both  its 
heavenward  and  its  earthward  sides,  and  he  possessed, 
besides,  that  accomplishment  of  language  which  allowed 
him  to  give  the  racial  element  in  the  form  of  literature. 
He  would  have  been  called,  as  the  world  goes,  a  poor  man, 
but  in  his  own  village  he  was  well-off;  he  lived,  on  his 


174  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

thousand  or  more  dollars  a  year,  the  life  of  a  refined 
gentleman,  and  reared  his  family,  like  others  of  his  own 
station,  on  this  sum  in  an  atmosphere  of  true  cultivation; 
he  was  economical,  frugal  even,  and  independent;  but 
what  distinguished  him,  and  made  him  a  true  leader  in 
that  homogeneous  community,  was  that  he  kept  the  old 
perspective  of  the  relative  worth  of  spiritual  and  temporal 
things,  inherited  from  Puritan  days  in  the  habits  of  the 
mind,  and  held  to  the  lasting  transcendency  of  the  one 
and  the  evanescence  of  the  other,  without  any  sense  of 
effort  or  consciousness  of  peculiarity,  just  as  his  neighbors 
also  did,  but  he  did  it  in  a  singularly  high  and  exemplary 
way. 

In  a  world  so  conceived  his  freedom  was  remarkable, 
his  disengagement,  his  independence  of  thought  and  ac- 
tion both,  his  responsibility  only  to  himself,  his  indiffer- 
ence to  others'  views.  Scarce  any  man  was  so  free  as  he. 
His  self-possession  in  this  attitude  was  almost  spectacular 
to  others.  It  struck  them  as  "sublime  insolence,"  and 
any  number  of  such  phrases  of  amazement  at  a  man  who 
was  simply  true  to  himself,  and  took  no  more  thought  of 
the  crowd  or  of  the  individual  than  he  did  of  the  morrow. 
Truth  had  never  a  better  seeker;  he  took  only  what  was 
necessary  for  the  journey,  and  what  he  found  with  his 
eyes  he  declared  with  his  lips.  Things  that  were  not  in 
the  line  of  his  search  did  not  interest  him;  they  might  be 
matters  as  grave  and  sacred,  as  endeared  and  intimate, 
as  the  Holy  Communion,  but  he  passed  on;  of  course  he 
shocked  many  a  tender  conscience  and  many  a  hardy 
dogmatist,  but  he  was  ignorant  of  it  essentially,  being 
clad  in  a  panoply  of  innocence  that  was  almost  simplicity 
of  mind.  The  same  spirit  that  he  showed  in  religious 
thought  he  exhibited  also  in  politics,  and  not  temporary 


THE   LITERARY   AGE    OF    BOSTON  175 

politics  only,  but  that  lasting  Americanism  which  he 
molded  into  so  many  memorable  phrases  of  freedom, 
equality,  and  fraternity. 

His  time  of  illumination  was  in  early  manhood,  and  the 
little  work  called  ''Nature''  was  its  gospel;  later,  as  he 
traveled  farther  from  the  light,  he  declined  on  more 
mundane  matters  of  morals  and  manners,  on  conduct,  on 
the  question  of  human  behavior  in  one  or  another  way, 
and  left  the  old,  speculative  table-lands  of  his  youth,  and 
with  him  life  after  thirty-five  was  a  declining  day.  Yet 
always  his  method  was  by  intuition;  his  courage  re- 
sponded to  the  challenge  of  the  unknown,  to  the  tangle- 
growth  of  poetry  and  philosophy,  to  the  dragon- jaws  of 
paradox;  and  if  at  times,  in  our  more  sophisticated  sight, 
Emerson  in  his  mental  adventures  seems  to  suffer  from 
the  irrepressible  joke  that  lurks  in  life,  almost  like  some 
Parson  Adams  of  the  mind,  he  is  only  thereby  brought 
the  nearer  to  our  home-breed,  and  graced  the  more  with 
that  nameless  quality  which,  in  other  ways,  also  shines 
from  his  figure,  and  endears  the  Don  Quixote  of  every 
idealistic  race.  Such  he  was  —  the  idealism  of  New 
England  in  its  human  saintship;  or,  if  not  quite  that,  as 
near  it  as  Heaven  ever  makes  the  living  Don  Quixotes  of 
real  life. 

These  analogies  may  seem  derogatory,  but  they  are  not 
really  so;  they  are,  in  their  sphere,  patents  of  true  no- 
bility, another  sort  of  crowning  phrase  to  tell  how  that 
in  his  mortal  life  he  was  not  untouched  by  the  pathetic 
grotesqueness  which  clings  to  the  idealist  everywhere  in 
this  tough  world,  while  in  his  soul  he  was  also  the  white 
flower  of  Puritanism  —  flos  regum,  the  last  of  his  race. 
Puritanism,  the  old  search  for  God  in  New  England, 
ended  in  him:  and  he  became  its  medium  at  its  culmi- 


176  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

nating  moment  of  vision  and  freedom,  because  he  was  a 
racial  man,  and  held,  condensed,  purified,  and  heightened 
in  his  own  heart,  the  developed  genius  of  the  small,  free, 
resolute,  righteous.  God-fearing  people,  the  child  of  whose 
brief  centuries  he  was;  they  found  no  other  world- voice. 
Emerson  was  their  gift  at  the  great  altar  of  man. 

If  Emerson  was  the  concentration  and  embodiment  of 
the  inward  Puritan  life,  the  strength  and  beauty  of  the 
naked  soul  that  had  cast  the  garment  of  the  past  and 
emerged  at  last  in  lucid  regions,  Longfellow  —  who,  per- 
haps from  some  prepossession  in  favor  of  poets,  I  can- 
not but  regard  as  second  in  the  New  England  group 
—  was  representative  of  the  outward  charm  of  intellectual 
culture  as  it  came  to  fullness  in  the  community;  and 
though  it  may  seem  a  mere  subtlety  to  say  so,  intellectual 
culture  is,  in  truth,  an  outward  thing.  So,  too,  as  Har- 
vard, by  virtue  of  being  the  fount  of  the  old  ministry, 
the  place  of  the  enlightenment  and  enlargement  when 
the  kinder  hour  came,  and  the  nursery  of  the  youth  who 
heard  and  followed  the  new  voice,  had  bred,  nourished, 
and  supported  Emerson,  the  old  College  also  performed 
a  similar  service  for  Longfellow,  opening  the  way  for  him, 
yielding  him  a  place  in  the  midst  of  her  power,  and  sur- 
rounding him  from  youth  to  age  with  such  a  happy  en- 
vironment of  friends  and  things  that  he  might  well  think 
of  his  lot  as  the  special  favor  of  Heaven. 

He  was  Maine-born,  and  reared  at  the  neighboring  col- 
lege of  Bowdoin,  to  whose  academic  influences  he  was 
greatly  indebted;  but  Harvard,  in  adopting  him,  made 
him  her  own,  and  gave  him  a  career  among  her  own,  and 
he  and  the  humane  studies  he  stood  for  became  an  in- 
tegral and  lasting  part  of  the  ideal  of  Harvard  culture, 
which  has  suffered  no  essential  change  even  now,  though 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  177 

its  relative  sphere  at  Harvard  is  much  narrowed,  par- 
taking the  spiritual  retrogression,  the  decline  in  refine- 
ment, of  the  nation  at  large.  It  is  true  that  this  ideal 
of  Harvard  culture  had  already  begun  to  form  before 
Longfellow's  time.  Just  as  Channing  had  prepared  the 
way  for  Emerson  in  the  things  of  the  pure  spirit,  George 
Ticknor  was  the  precursor  of  Longfellow,  not  only  as  a 
scholar  in  whom  the  refining  power  of  scholarship  was 
eminent,  but  as  a  scholar  in  the  same  fields  of  literature. 
Yet  the  crest  of  the  wave,  which  was  the  first  movement 
of  Old- World  culture  across  the  Atlantic,  was  certainly 
Longfellow's  "Dante,"  of  which  his  earlier  collections  and 
translations  were  forerunners,  and  to  which  Lowell's 
work,  when  he  came  to  succeed  him,  was  hardly  more 
than  an  appendix.  That  first  appropriation  of  foreign 
thought  in  New  England  took  place  so  obscurely,  and 
had  so  few  distinctive  results  in  our  own  literature,  that 
its  history  and  import  are  much  forgotten.  It  deserves 
a  little  chapter  to  itself  when  our  literature  comes  to  be 
written  in  any  other  than  a  biographical  form. 

The  impact  of  Carlyle  and  a  few  other  single  figures, 
such  as  Goethe,  Lessing,  Fourier,  is  sometimes  noted,  and 
to  such  writers  as  Ripley  and  Margaret  Fuller,  Hedge 
and  Hilliard,  much  is  due.  What  Longfellow  accom- 
plished did  not  lie  so  much  in  this  field  of  individual 
authors  and  specific  thought  on  particular  matters  then 
of  current  interest;  he  brought  over,  as  it  were,  whole 
literatures,  putting  us  in  touch  as  a  nation  with  the 
tongues  of  the  north  and  south  of  Europe  alike,  with  all 
the  shores  of  old  romance,  with  the  spirit  that  abides 
beautiful  in  the  chronicles  of  wasted  time;  he  annexed 
by  a  stroke  of  the  pen  this  literary  past  of  Europe  to 
our  New  World;  at  least  to  him,  as  unquestionably  the 


178  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

first  modern  scholar  of  his  time,  a  scholar  of  the  spirit 
as  well  as  of  the  text,  go  the  praise  and  the  grateful  re- 
membrance of  all  who  have  since  followed,  though  far 
off.  in  his  footsteps.  So  Emerson,  too,  first  felt  the  fruc- 
tifying power  of  Oriental  thought  in  his  own  sphere  of 
philosophy  and  the  poetry  of  general  causes,  and  inter- 
preted it  somewhat,  however  defective  the  interpretation; 
and  through  these  two  men  largely  such  expansion  as 
contrasts  with  fresh  and  novel  literatures  can  give  came 
to  our  education.  It  is  in  this  part  of  his  work  that 
Harvard,  holding  up  Longfellow^s  hands,  most  helped 
the  cause  of  civilization  so  far  as  that  is  involved  in  the 
permanence  of  literature,  and  received  for  her  reward  that 
ideal  of  Harvard  culture,  already  referred  to,  which  is 
embedded  in  her  traditions. 

As  a  scholar  Longfellow  was  cosmopolitan,  but  in  that 
portion  of  his  life  which  was  the  fruit  of  his  poetic  gift 
he  was  distinctively  American.  If  the  mildness  of  his 
nature  be  considered,  the  fervor  of  Longfellow's  pa- 
triotism was  a  very  marked  quality;  his  habitual  artistic 
control  conceals  its  real  force,  but  does  not  hide  its  clear 
depth;  from  the  early  days,  when  he  was  all  for  Ameri- 
canism in  literature,  through  his  manhood  friendship  with 
Sumner,  and  his  anti-slavery  poems,  to  the  darker  days 
of  the  sinking  of  the  Cumberland  and  the  prayer  for  the 
ship  of  state,  he  was  one  with  his  country's  aspiration, 
struggle,  and  trial,  one  in  heart  with  her  life;  but  he 
showed  this  patriotic  prepossession  of  his  whole  nature, 
if  less  touchingly,  still  more  significantly,  by  his  choice  of 
American  themes  for  what  were  in  no  sense  occasional 
poems,  but  the  greater  works  in  which  he  built  most  con- 
sciously and  patiently  for  her  fame  in  poetry  —  in 
"Hiawatha,"  "Evangeline,"  "Miles  Standish,"  and  the 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  179 

like.  It  is  the  fashion  to  decry  these  poems  now,  yet  the 
fact  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  each  of  these  remains  the  only 
successful  poem  of  its  kind  —  one  of  Indian  life,  one  of 
the  colonial  pastoral,  one  of  the  Puritan  idyl  —  while  the 
trials  made  by  others  have  been  numerous;  and  in  each 
of  these,  but  especially  in  the  first  two,  there  is  in  quality 
a  marvelous  purity  of  tone  which,  for  those  who  are  sensi- 
tive to  it,  is  one  of  the  rarest  of  poetic  pleasures.  It  is 
also  the  fashion  to  decry  the  shorter  poems  by  which 
Longfellow  entered  into  the  homes  of  the  people,  but  if 
Heaven  ever  grants  the  prayer  that  a  poet  may  write  the 
songs  of  a  people,  it  is  surely  in  such  poems  as  these 
that  the  divine  gift  reveals  its  presence.  They  are  in 
the  mouths  of  children  and  on  the  lips  of  boys,  and  that 
is  well;  but  they  are  also  strength  and  consolation  to 
older  hearts;  they  are  read  in  quiet  hours,  they  are  mur- 
mured in  darkened  rooms,  they  blend  with  the  sacred  ex- 
periences of  many  lives.  Say  what  one  will,  the  "Psalm 
of  Life"  is  a  trumpet-call,  and  a  music  breathes  from 
"Resignation,"  in  which  the  clod  on  the  coffin  ceases  to  be 
heard,  and  dies  out  of  the  ear  at  last  with  peace.  In  the 
grosser  spirit  of  life  that  now  everywhere  prevails,  even 
among  the  best,  and  is  not  confined  to  any  one  sphere  of 
politics,  art,  or  letters,  nor  to  any  one  country  or  capital, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  fame  of  Longfellow  should 
be  obscured;  but  his  silent  presence  must  still  be  deeply 
and  widely  felt  in  those  simpler  and  million  homes  that 
make  up  the  popular  life  which,  as  the  whole  history  of 
poetry  shows,  can  never  be  corrupted.  Longfellow  had 
this  remarkable  and  double  blessing:  he  was  the  product 
of  the  old  Puritan  stock  at  its  culminating  moment  of 
refinement,  its  most  cultivated  gentleman,  and  he  also 
enters  most  easily  at  lowly  doors. 


i8o  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE    ^ 

Hawthorne  is  the  third  great  New  England  name,  and 
many  would  place  him  higher  than  either  Emerson  or 
Longfellow,  in  valuing  his  pure  genius;  but  from  the 
point  of  view  here  taken,  which  is  mainly  one  of  historical 
significance  and  the  communal  life,  he  falls  necessarily 
into  an  inferior  position.  He,  too,  was  the  child  of  the 
old  Puritanism,  and,  like  the  others,  was  emancipated 
from  its  bonds  from  boyhood;  but  something  stayed  in 
his  blood  which  in  the  others  had  suffered  a  happy  change. 
The  genius  of  Emerson  and  Longfellow  worked  in  the 
line  of  growth,  so  that  they  mark  in  their  different  spheres 
the  attainment  of  a  new  goal;  the  genius  of  Hawthorne 
involved  rather  a  reversion  to  the  Puritan  past,  and,  not 
only  that,  but  to  what  was  grim,  harsh,  and  terrible  in 
its  spirit;  his  genius  worked  in  a  reactionary  way  upon 
the  theme  of  his  brooding,  and  he  threw  open  the  doors 
of  the  past  rather  than  the  gates  of  the  future.  He  found 
what  people  find  in  tombs  —  dead  sins  and  moldered 
garments  of  the  soul.  Puritanism  was  to  him  a  dreadful 
memory,  which  so  fastened  on  his  mind  as  to  obtain  new 
life,  like  an  evil  obsession  there,  as  if,  in  truth,  it  were 
still  contemporary  in  men's  bosoms  too,  and  he  could  read 
them  by  its  dark  light. 

This  recrudescence  of  Puritanism,  in  an  imaginative 
form,  in  Hawthorne,  was  the  cardinal  thing  about  him  in 
relation  to  the  community;  by  virtue  of  it  he  made  Tus- 
cany another  Salem,  and  gave  the  treasures  of  Catholic 
art  to  feed  the  fires  of  the  Puritan  Moloch.  His  village 
world  of  observation  was  his  own,  as  he  saw  it  in  daily 
life  and  faithfully  recorded  it;  but  his  world  of  imagina- 
tion was  the  old  Puritan  country-side,  seen  in  spectral, 
uncanny,  Dantesque  ways,  a  hateful  past  full  of  pictures 
turning  to  life  under  his  hand,  to  your  life  and  my  life. 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  i8i 

to  the  life  of  man  as  it  is  in  the  eternal  present.  He 
could  not  shake  it  off;  his  genius  cast  shadow;  he  was  a 
profound  pessimist  —  sin  to  him  was  life.  Out  of  all 
this  came  a  single  new  creation,  which  with  Knicker- 
bocker and  Leatherstocking  makes  the  third  original 
American  type,  Donatello;  like  them,  he  has  no  basis  in 
vital  life;  he  is  a  blend  of  elemental  things,  a  dream  of 
the  mind,  an  emanation  half  of  the  artistic  senses  of  a 
poetic  temperament  in  love  with  life,  half  of  the  remorse- 
ful thought  of  a  heart  that  had  "kept  watch  o'er  man's 
mortality";  but,  visionary  as  he  is,  Donatello  is  a  true 
imaginative  type,  no  more  to  be  forgotten  than  the  other 
purely  artistic  figures  of  literature,  like  Sir  Galahad,  like 
the  Red  Cross  Knight,  of  whose  race  he  is.  It  seems 
a  miracle  of  time  that  drew  out  of  the  dark  bosom  of 
Puritanism  this  figure  of  the  early  world,  fair  with  Greek 
beauty,  and  made  its  plastic  loveliness  the  flower  in  art 
of  the  Puritan  conscience. 

It  is  art  that  finally  sets  Hawthorne  aloof  from  the 
others  in  a  place  of  his  own.  It  might  almost  be  said 
that  forhim  heredity  had  become  environment!  so  much 
did  tEe^st  oversway  th^  pf^i^ent  111  his  nioral  tempera- 
ment, his  outlook  on  life,  and  his  probings  of  its  mys- 
teries; his  genius,  in  its  most  concentrated  and  intense 
work,  was  deeply  engaged  in  this  inherited  subject-matter, 
this  reluctant,  repellent,  stubborn  Puritan  stuff,  the  dark, 
hard  ore;  but  the  object  of  his  attention  being  thus  given, 
and  the  manner  of  its  interpretation  being  born  in  him, 
also,  he  remained  for  the  rest  more  the  pure  literary 
artist  than  his  contemporaries  in  New  England;  the  in- 
stinct of  romantic  art  for  its  own  mere  sake  was  in  him. 
In  the  expanding  life  of  New  England  this  thing,  too, 
had  happened  with  other  things:  an  artist  had  been  born 


i82  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

there.  He  was  strangely  indifferent  to  everything  in  the 
community,  he  was  solitary  and  a  man  apart;  but  he 
was  faithful  to  his  own  one  talent,  the  power  to  take  an 
original  view  of  the  world,  a  romantic  view,  and  turn  it 
to  pictures  in  the  loom  of  literature.  The  world  remained 
.the  old  Puritan  world,  all  the  world  he  knew;  but  in  his 
eyes  it  became  a  pictorial  thing,  while  retaining,  neces- 
sarily, its  moral  substance  and  tragic  suggestiveness,  and 
it  took  on  artistic  form  under  his  hand.  His  love  for  his 
art  and  the  things  in  life  that  would  feed  it  was  absorbing; 
he  idled  at  all  times  when  not  employed  with  it;  he  found 
his  happiness  in  exercising  it;  it  was  his  art  that  was 
necessary  to  him,  not  its  message;  he  lived  by  imagina- 
tion. In  him,  consequently,  the  communal  life  is  seen  in 
the  last  of  its  threefold  manifestations  in  the  literature 
of  the  old  Puritan  race;  in  Emerson  it  shows  forth  in  the 
pure  soul,  in  Longfellow  it  blossomed  in  the  heart,  and 
in  Hawthorne  it  left,  as  on  darkness,  its  imaginative 
dream. 

In  these  three  men  the  genius  of  the  people,  working 
out  in  the  place  and  among  the  things  of  its  New  Eng- 
land nativity,  reached  its  height,  so  far  as  concerns  that 
partial  expression  which  literature  can  give  to  a  people's 
life.  They  were  surrounded  by  manifold  other 
activities  of  the  commercial  spirit,  in  politics,  trade, 
philanthropy,  taking  place  in  a  busy  state;  they 
were  supported,  however,  by  an  educated  class  in  large 
numbers  of  similar  breeding,  sympathetic  in  taste  and 
interest,  and  openly  appreciative  of  their  labors;  and 
there  were,  also,  perhaps  a  score  of  other  writers  about 
them  among  whom  three  still  stand  out  with  great  promi- 
nence—  Holmes,  Whittier,  and  Lowell  —  of  whom  two, 
as  in  the  other  group,  were  closely  bound  to  Harvard 
College. 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  183 

Holmes  was,  in  fact,  what  he  liked  to  be  thought  —  a 
town  wit.  His  attachment  to  the  English  of  the  eighteenth 
century  was  the  result  of  a  native  sympathy.  He  was  a 
citified  man,  such  as  the  old  Londoners  were.  He  was 
not  so  much  a  New-Englander  as  he  was  a  Bostonian, 
and  not  so  much  a  Bostonian  as  he  was  a  "Brahmin,"  to 
use  his  own  name  for  the  thing,  with  just  that  diminishing 
inclusiveness  that  Henry  James  expressed  in  saying  of 
Thoreau  that  he  was  "more  than  provincial;  he  was 
parochial."  Holmes  was,  in  certain  ways,  the  city  paral- 
lel to  that.  It  is  seen  in  his  consciousness  of  his  audience, 
which  is  ever  present,  in  the  dinner-talk  flavor  of  his 
prose,  in  the  local  "asides"  of  his  many  occasional  poems; 
he  has  not  the  art  to  forget  himself.  Such  a  writer  is 
seldom  understood  except  by  the  generation  with  which 
he  is  in  social  touch;  magnetism  leaves  him;  he  amuses 
his  own  time  with  a  brilliant  mental  vivacity,  but  there 
it  ends. 

Whittier  was  the  opposite  of  Holmes;  he  was  the  poet 
of  the  plain  people,  born  among  them  and  never  parting 
company  by  virtue  of  education  or  that  sort  of  growth 
which  involves  a  change  in  social  surroundings.  His 
Quaker  blood  distinguished  him  from  the  others,  who 
were  all  Unitarians;  but  the  distinction  is  illusory,  for 
his  Quakerism  did  for  him  precisely  what  Unitarianism 
did  for  them  in  giving  mildness  and  breadth  to  his  religious 
spirit.  It  is  by  his  piety  that  he  most  appeals  now  to 
the  general  heart;  by  his  reminiscences  of  the  outward 
form  of  New  England  country  life  and  its  domestic  types, 
as  in  "Snowbound,"  he  came  near  to  the  homes  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  while  as  the  antislavery  poet  he  held 
a  specific  and  historic  place  in  the  life  of  the  times;  the 
three  strains  of  interest,  especially  when  felt  through  the 


i84  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

medium  of  his  simple  goodness,  preserve  his  fame;  more- 
over, as  a  people's  poet,  whose  humble  manhood  remained 
unspoiled,  he  is  assured  of  long  memory.  As  a  type  of 
character  he  was  as  appropriate  for  the  country  as 
Holmes  was  for  the  city;  though  both  are  high  types, 
and  though  it  seems  paradoxical,  Whittier  had  vastly  the 
greater  range.  Both  were  deeply  rooted  in  the  soil,  and 
had  native  history  in  their  blood;  both,  too,  were  provin- 
cial in  a  way  that  their  three  great  contemporaries  were 
not. 

In  the  case  of  Lowell  there  is  still  something  enigmatic. 
He  was  younger  than  the  others;  he  was  more  complex 
in  nature,  and  changed  more  from  youth  to  age  and  even 
late  in  life.  He  alone  owed  much  of  his  public  recognition 
to  the  accident  of  office.  He  cannot  take  his  own  place  in 
literature  until,  like  Irving,  he  is  forgotten  as  an  am- 
bassador. He  came  of  Unitarian  ancestry,  like  Emerson; 
he  was  bred  on  the  same  studies  as  Longfellow,  whom  he 
succeeded  as  a  scholar;  he  developed  criticism,  but  did 
not  relinquish  poetry;  he  did  not  work  hard  at  either 
prose  or  verse.  The  "Biglow  Papers"  is  his  most  original 
work,  racy  of  the  soil  and  the  times,  in  its  homelier  sphere 
as  native  a  product  of  the  practical  as  "Donatello"  is  of 
the  spiritual  temper  of  that  breed  of  men.  The  "Com- 
memoration Ode"  is  his  loftiest  achievement.  He  was 
the  poet  of  the  civil  war  in  a  sense  not  so  true  of  any  of 
the  four  older  poets.  He  lived  in  a  Harvard  atmosphere 
all  his  life,  but  no  man  was  less  academic.  His  prose 
came  mainly  from  his  brain,  and  is  of  a  transitory  nature, 
and  steadily  grows  less  interesting.  These  seem  the  main 
facts  about  him.  He  now  seems  essentially  a  man  of 
letters,  of  high  endowments,  having  the  accomplishment 
of  verse  with  his  many  other  rich  and  varied  gifts,  and 


THE   LITERARY   AGE   OF    BOSTON  185 

no  more  than  that.  It  would  appear  that  the  inspiration 
that  gave  us  Emerson,  Longfellow,  and  Hawthorne  had 
already  begun  to  fail,  and  beat  with  a  lowered  pulse  in 
the  youngest  and  last  of  the  group. 

It  becomes  plain  on  looking  back  that  the  literary  age 
of  Boston  was  before  the  civil  war.  With  the  exception 
of  Lowell  —  and  this  helps  to  explain  his  position  —  the 
character  of  these  men  was  formed  and  their  work  com- 
pletely determined  before  i860,  and  most  of  it  was  done. 
It  was  all  the  aftermath  of  Puritanism  in  literature.  The 
debt  it  owed  to  Unitarianism  is  clear;  its  direct  and  in- 
direct obligation  to  Harvard  College,  though  but  par- 
tially set  forth,  is  obviously  great,  and  just  as  clearly  was 
due  to  the  old  humanities  as  there  taught.  In  forty  years 
we  have  drifted  further  perhaps  than  any  of  us  have 
thought  from  the  conditions  and  influences  that  gave  our 
country  so  large  a  part  of  its  literary  distinction. 


CHAPTER  IV 

TliE     SOUTH 

The  South  has  from  the  beginning  contained,  in  the 
mass,  a  peculiar  people.  The  special  traits  of  its  literary 
history  are  not  wholly  explained  by  the  statement,  so 
often  made,  that  there  colonial  conditions  of  life  con- 
tinued until  the  social  dissolution  brought  about  by  the 
civil  war,  and  that  colonial  conditions,  as  has  been  seen, 
did  not  in  the  North  result  in  original  literature.  Much 
that  was  favorable  to  literary  development  existed  in  the 
South  from  the  formation  of  the  Union  onward.  The 
aspects  of  natural  scenery  there,  picturesque,  luxuriant, 
novel,  with  features  of  moorland  and  mountain,  of  low- 
land and  upland,  of  river  and  coast,  of  rice  and  cotton 
culture,  of  swamp,  bayou,  and  sand,  of  a  bird  and  flower 
world  of  marvelous  brilliancy  and  music,  of  an  atmos- 
phere and  climate  clothing  the  night  and  day  and  the 
seasons  of  the  stars  in  new  garments  of  sensibility  and 
suggestion  —  all  this  was  like  a  new  theme  and  school  to 
the  poet  who  should  chance  to  be  born  there.  The  human 
history  of  the  States,  too,  with  its  racial  features  of 
mingled  Gallic  and  Scotch  strains  in  the  blood  of  the 
country,  with  its  adventurous  conquest  of  the  land  be- 
yond the  mountains  and  about  the  mouths  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, with  its  border  traditions,  was  both  various  and 
exciting  to  the  imagination,  hardly  less  than  was  the  open 
air  of  the  plains  or  the  fascination  of  the  Golden  Gate 
in  the  West.  The  historical  culture  of  the  past  gave  a 
starting-point;  education,  books,  travel  were  to  be  found 

i86 


THE   SOUTH  187 

in  a  leisure  class,  who  were  the  masters  of  the  land.  The 
power  of  nature,  the  power  of  race,  and  the  power  of  the 
transmitted  civilization  of  older  times  were  not  lacking; 
there  was  even  a  radiating  centre.  Virginia,  in  what  was 
its  great  age,  offered  fair  hope  of  true  leadership  in  the 
supreme  functions  of  national  life.  The  group  of  the 
Revolution,  which  has  made  the  State  illustrious  in  his- 
tory, lasted  far  on  into  the  next  age,  and  was  distinguished 
not  only  by  individual  force,  but  by  an  enlightenment  and 
generosity  of  mind  of  the  happiest  promise.  Jefferson, 
in  particular,  who  was  the  one  great  dreamer  ever  born 
in  this  land,  was  well  fitted  to  be  not  only  the  fountain- 
head  of  a  Declaration  and  of  a  University,  but  of  a  litera- 
ture; or,  if  not  the  fountain-head,  he,  at  least,  held  the 
rod  to  smite  the  rock.  It  is,  perhaps,  forgotten  that  in 
the  fall  of  1776  Jefferson,  in  association  with  four  other 
Virginian  gentlemen,  proposed  a  general  system  of  law  in 
which  one  measure  was  for  the  diffusion  of  knowledge 
among  the  people.    It  is  thus  described: 

"After  a  preamble,  in  which  the  importance  of  the 
subject  to  the  Republic  is  most  ably  and  eloquently  an- 
nounced, the  bill  proposes  a  simple  and  beautiful  scheme 
whereby  science  (like  justice  under  the  institutions  of 
our  Alfred)  would  have  been  carried  to  every  man^s 
door.  Genius,  instead  of  having  to  break  its  way  through 
the  thick,  opposing  clouds  of  native  obscurity,  indigence, 
and  ignorance,  was  to  be  sought  for  through  every  family 
in  the  commonwealth;  the  sacred  spark,  wherever  it  was 
detected,  was  to  be  tenderly  cherished,  fed,  and  fanned 
into  a  flame;  its  innate  properties  and  tendencies  were  to 
be  developed  and  examined,  and  then  cautiously  and  ju- 
diciously invested  with  all  the  auxiliary  energy  and 
radiance  of  which  its  character  was  susceptible.    What 


i88  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

a  plan  was  here  to  give  stability  and  solid  glory  to  the 
Republic!" 

It  was  surely  a  generous  dream  of  these  five  Virginian 
gentlemen,  and  shows  the  spirit  and  outlook  of  that  en- 
thusiastic and  public-spirited  age  in  the  Old  Dominion. 
But,  none  the  less,  it  was  the  light  of  a  false  dawn.  Pub- 
lic spirit  lied  out  in  Virginia  before  these  men  were  dead. 

What  was  it  that  sterilized  the  fresh  strength  of  the 
young  nation  in  its  fairest  poetic  region?  The  common- 
place is  to  say  that  it  was  the  institution  of  slavery;  and, 
however  far  the  analysis  be  pressed,  it  does  not  really 
escape  from  this  answer,  from  the  repeated  burden  of 
all  lands  and  climates  that  genius,  the  higher  life  of  man, 
withers  in  the  air  of  social  tyranny.  Slavery  is  a  mutual 
bond;  to  a  true  and  impartial  eye  the  masters  are  also 
caught  and  bound  in  the  same  chains  with  the  slaves. 
Certain  it  is  that  literature  in  any  proper  sense  ceased 
even  to  be  hoped  for,  and  ceased  also  to  be  respected  as 
one  of  the  vital  elements  of  national  life. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  that  what  the  South  afforded 
to  general  literature,  in  the  main,  was  given  into  the  hands 
of  strangers.  There  was  an  interesting  plantation  life  in 
Virginia  on  great  estates,  pre-Revolutionary,  and  not  dis- 
similar in  certain  aspects  to  the  life  of  the  great  Tory 
houses  of  the  North,  and  of  these  latter  no  trace  in  litera- 
ture survives;  but  the  Virginian  record  was  written  by 
Thackeray's  imagination.  There  was  in  the  South  of 
later  days  the  great  theme  of  slavery  itself,  a  varied  and 
mighty  theme  even  before  the  civil  war  gave  it  epical 
range;  in  those  days  it  was  still  only  a  story  of  individual 
human  lives,  but  it  was  written  in  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin," 
the  one  book  by  which  the  old  South  survives  in  litera- 
ture,   for    better    or    worse.      Characteristic    Southern 


THE   SOUTH  189 

scenery  added  more  to  Whittier's  verse  than  to  that  of 
any  poet  of  its  own  soil.  It  will  also,  perhaps,  be  re- 
garded as  curious,  though  not  the  less  true,  to  observe 
that  such  literature  as  the  South  produced  by  native 
writers  is  so  intimately  connected  with  the  national  life 
that  the  closeness  of  its  relation  thereto  is,  broadly  speak- 
ing, the  measure  of  its  vitality.  This  is  plainly  the  case 
in  so  far  as  the  intellectual  vigor  of  the  South  was  con- 
fined to  legal  and  political  channels,  and  found  its  chief 
outlet  in  the  national  councils  through  argument  and 
oratory;  and  this  is  the  chief  part  of  the  matter.  But 
it  is  also  true  of  such  a  writer  of  the  imagination  as 
Simms,  the  most  distinguished  prose  author  of  the  South 
and  typical  of  its  middle  period,  who  found  his  best 
themes  in  national  episodes;  and  it  is  true  of  Poe,  the 
sole  writer  of  the  first  rank,  whose  popularity  and  appeal 
were  always  in  the  mid-stream  of  contemporary  national 
production,  who  lived  in  the  national  literary  market- 
places, and  entered  into  his  fame  by  prevailing  with  the 
readers  of  the  magazines  and  books  of  the  national  public. 
The  colonial  dependence  of  the  South  in  literary  matters 
was  not  on  Europe,  but  on  the  North;  its  literature  took 
up  a  provincial  relation  thereto;  its  authors  emigrated, 
mentally  and  often  bodily,  thither;  in  other  words. 
Southern  literature  does  not  exist,  in  any  of  its  forms, 
political,  fictional,  or  poetic,  except  in  relation  to  the 
national  idea,  either  as  its  product  or  as  the  result  of 
reaction  from  it.  The  nation  was  the  parent  of  all  the 
higher  activity  of  the  mind  of  the  South,  fostered,  sus- 
tained, and  prospered  it,  even  when  that  activity  was 
directed  against  itself.  There  is  nothing  exceptional  in 
this,  for  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  literature  to  flourish 
where  the  social  life  of  the  community  is  largest,  most 
vital,  and  culminative. 


190  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

The  decadence  of  the  cultivated  intellectual  life  of 
Virginia  —  and  in  that  State  alone  did  it  exist  in  a  virile 
condition  —  was  coincident  with  the  declining  years  of 
Jefferson  and  his  great  associates;  but  it  did  not  take 
place  without  the  continuing  presence  of  the  older  and 
nobler  ideals.  The  man  in  whom  these  were  conspicuous, 
and  who  best  represents  what  was  most  humane,  enlight- 
ened, and  fairest  in  the  community,  was  William  Wirt, 
now  almost  a  forgotten  name.  He  was  primarily  a  man  of 
the  law,  though  distinguished  as  much  for  eloquence  as  for 
argument  and  reasoning;  he  had,  besides,  a  certain  dig- 
nity of  mind.  He  was  of  the  next  generation  after  the 
Revolutionary  fathers,  and  in  him  one  feels  the  after- 
glow of  a  great  time.  He  was  still  in  touch  with  English 
literary  tradition,  and  occasionally  ventured  on  works 
beyond  the  view  and  interests  of  the  law,  the  fruits  of 
that  true  liberal  education  which  he  possessed.  "The 
Letters  of  the  British  Spy"  was  his  most  significant  book, 
a  little  work,  and  in  itself  of  very  trifling  importance, 
but  sufficient  in  its  own  day  to  win  reputation  akin  to 
literary  fame.  What  it  discloses  now  to  the  rare  reader 
of  its  pages  is  the  mind  of  a  Virginian  of  that  generation, 
perhaps  the  best  mind.  The  eighteenth  century  still  rules 
in  it,  not  merely  in  the  form  and  method,  but  in  the 
weight  of  the  thought,  the  close,  compact,  accurate  ex- 
pression of  the  sense,  the  worth  of  the  reflections;  it  is, 
in  other  words,  intellectual  in  precisely  the  same  way  that 
Burke  is  intellectual.  Still  more  striking,  to  one  who  at- 
tempts to  place  the  book,  the  type  of  mind,  the  culture 
of  the  understanding,  in  time,  is  the  old-fashioned  classi- 
cism of  the  writer.  This  classicism  was  distinctly  a 
Southern  trait;  not  that  it  was  not  found  elsewhere,  but 
that  in  the  South  it  was  prized  more  dearly  and  lasted 


THE   SOUTH  191 

longer  than  elsewhere.  The  place  where  the  eighteenth 
century  finally  died  was  the  South;  and  this  mind  of 
William  Wirt  was,  perhaps,  the  last  recognizable  English 
mind  where  it  burned  or  flickered.  The  advice  that  he 
gives  to  some  young  aspirant  to  cultivate  facility  in  quot- 
ing from  Latin  authors,  because  it  is  agreeable  to  the 
Supreme  Court,  has  a  pleasant  flavor  of  age.  He  was 
himself  familiar  with  such  classics,  and  with  English 
writers  like  Boyle.  These  books  of  a  large  masculine 
stamp  had  formed  his  mind,  and  they  live  in  his  respect 
and  affection.  A  predominant  interest  in  oratory  is  no- 
ticeable, not  as  it  is  to-day,  but  the  Ciceronian,  Demos- 
thenic stripe,  the  oratory  of  the  British  Parliament,  by 
which  one  comes  vividly  near  to  Patrick  Henry  in  the 
past,  and  understands  better  Calhoun  and  Webster  in 
their  turn.  It  is  all  gone  now  —  the  eighteenth  century, 
the  classicism,  oratory,  and  all;  and  the  shadow  of  it  no 
longer  remains  at  Washington.  But  it  is  clear  that,  save 
that  there  is  here  a  legal  mind  interested  in  the  solid 
thinking  of  Burke,  Boyle,  and  Franklin,  this  is  the  par- 
allel in  Virginia  to  what  Irving  was  in  New  York,  himself 
by  literary  affiliation  nearer  to  Addison  and  Goldsmith. 
Wirt  was  the  companion  figure  to  Irving,  and  marks  the 
contemporaneousness  of  the  eighteenth  century  growing 
moribund  in  both  of  these  colonials;  yet  both,  too,  are 
sharers  in  the  new  life  of  the  new  land.  Irving  passed 
through  the  purgation  and  enlargement  of  long  foreign 
residence,  and  his  genius  developed  by  virtue  of  a  pure 
original  literary  gift,  and  he  was  continually  a  more  ac- 
complished writer,  and  finally  made  a  great  American 
name;  Wirt,  the  national  lawyer,  remained  in  the  sur- 
roundings amid  which  he  was  reared,  and  added  nothing 
to  what  he  had  inherited  from  the  literary  past. 


192  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

The  society  of  Virginia  in  that  generation  is  very 
clearly  seen  in  Wirt's  lively  sketches  of  figures  of  the  bar, 
and  in  the  tone  and  substance  of  his  correspondence.  The 
mental  strength  of  the  men,  and  the  original  peculiarities 
of  their  character,  are  such  as  belong  to  annals  of  the 
bar  everywhere;  the  circuit  acquaintance  of  Lincoln,  or 
of  Choate,  bears  the  same  general  stamp;  but  one  is 
made  aware  of  a  classic  tradition  of  composition  and 
delivery,  and  also  of  a  mode  of  life,  in  Wirt's  sphere 
which  are  distinctive,  and  which  are  recognized  as  Vir- 
ginia traits.  Any  discussion  of  Virginia  matters  finally 
turns  to  a  description  of  the  social  life,  which  was  the 
pride  of  the  State  and  its  chief  pleasure.  If  books  were 
to  be  written  there,  this  would  naturally  be  the  subject. 
It  was  Kennedy,  of  Maryland,  the  friend  and  biographer 
of  Wirt,  who  utilized  this  material,  and  thereby  became 
the  representative  of  intellectual  taste,  culture,  and 
achievement,  for  his  generation,  in  much  the  same  way 
as  Wirt  had  been  in  the  former  time,  so  far  as  literary 
remembrance  is  concerned.  He  was  a  gentleman  of  the 
same  classical  breeding,  and  of  similar  affiliations  with  the 
eighteenth  century;  but  he  was  also  more  powerfully  and 
directly  affected  by  Irving's  example  and  success.  He 
undertook,  in  the  leisure  of  a  legal  and  political  life,  to 
portray  the  scenes,  incidents,  and  characters  of  a  Virginia 
plantation  in  ^'Swallow  Barn,"  with  a  sketchy  and  ram- 
bling pen;  and  he  succeeded  in  producing  a  little  Virginia 
classic.  The  book  is  essentially  on  the  level  of  Mrs. 
Stowe's  "Old  Town  Folks,"  and  similar  provincial  pic- 
tures of  old  country  people,  except  that  the  touch  is  finer, 
and  especially  there  is  the  pervading  sense  of  literary 
reminiscence  in  the  narrative  declaring  its  kinship  with 
masterly  literature  of  the  past.    "Swallow  Barn"  is,  in 


THE   SOUTH  193 

effect,  something  between  the  "Roger  de  Coverley  Papers" 
and  "Waverley/'  with  Irving  as  the  interpreter,  the 
author^s  guide  and  friend.  It  is  a  nondescript  tale,  made 
up  of  plantation  scenes,  genteel  comedy,  rural  realism, 
figures  from  all  conditions  of  life,  crude  superstitious 
tales,  humors  of  the  law,  and  one  thing  and  another  that 
a  visitor  might  observe  and  set  down  as  notes  of  a  resi- 
dence in  the  district.  Typical  Southern  character  of 
several  varieties  abounds  in  its  pages.  Yet  as  a  literary 
description  of  the  society  it  attempts  to  depict,  it  falls 
far  short  of  any  excellence  which  would  allow  it  to  be 
placed  in  the  class  to  which  it  aspires. 

Nor  in  his  other  writings  does  Kennedy  succeed  in 
making  himself  a  man  of  letters.  His  books  are  enter- 
taining, as  diaries  and  travelers'  tales  please  the  reader, 
but  not  after  the  style  and  fashion  of  imaginative  writers. 
It  is  rather  the  author  himself  who  is  significant,  the 
refined  and  amiable  gentleman  whose  taste  is  for  literary 
elegance,  and  whose  capacity  to  write  is  rather  one  of 
his  mild  accomplishments  than  an  original  gift,  but  whose 
title  to  rank  as  the  representative  of  his  community  in 
letters  is  indisputable.  A  fine  representative  he  is,  too; 
one  who  would  have  graced  any  literary  coterie  of  the 
English  world;  but  a  man  of  instincts  and  tastes,  of  sym- 
pathetic warmth  and  kindly  humorousness,  of  sweet  be- 
havior, rather  than  a  man  of  powers.  He  stands 
practically  alone,  too;  for  "Beverly  Tucker,"  though  of 
a  similar  sphere,  and  following  Cooper  instead  of  Irving, 
has  a  much  laxer  hold  on  remembrance.  In  these  men 
the  emasculated  tradition  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
though  reinforced  by  the  fresh  vigor  of  Irving's  and 
Cooper's  success  with  American  subjects,  died  out;  and 
Virginia  life,  never  virile  in  imaginative  creation,  became 


194  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

very  slightly  receptive  even  of  the  modern  writers,  though 
the  Georgian  poets,  and  especially  Byron  and  Moore, 
were  somewhat  known. 

The  best  gauge  of  the  literary  vitality  of  the  South 
towards  the  middle  of  the  century  is  the  magazine  which 
White  founded  at  Richmond,  "The  Southern  Literary 
Messenger."  The  mere  fact  that  this  periodical  was 
started  testifies  to  the  presence  of  intellectual  interests  in 
the  community.  Education  of  the  sort  befitting  a  young 
gentleman  of  the  day  was  provided  for  the  youth  of  the 
ruling  class  by  private  tutors,  by  travel,  by  residence  at 
Yale  or  Harvard,  or  elsewhere  in  the  North,  and  by  the 
home  University  of  Virginia.  This  last  institution,  the 
work  of  Jefferson's  foreseeing  mind,  never  ceased  to  be 
one  of  the  great  schools  of  the  nation.  If  its  power  and 
rank  were  to  be  measured  by  equipment  after  our  present 
materialistic  fashion,  they  might  seem  little  enough;  but 
if  they  are  judged  rather  by  the  number  and  quality  of 
the  minds  there  educated,  by  the  leadership  of  such  minds 
in  the  State  and  nation,  by  the  spread  of  their  influence 
through  the  farther  South  and  Southwest,  the  efficient 
force  of  the  University  must  be  highly  rated  as  a  factor 
in  society.  None  of  its  students  ever  lost  the  impress  of 
its  classical  studies  and  its  standards  of  behavior.  Poe, 
for  example,  shows  in  his  writings  more  traces  of  his 
schooling  than  any  other  American  author.  Undoubtedly, 
the  University  is  to  be  credited  with  the  formation  of 
the  intellectual  habit  of  the  South,  and  its  work  was  rather 
supplemented  than  displaced  by  foreign  residence. 

The  Richmond  magazine  was  essentially  dependent  on 
this  body  of  University  men  and  their  friends  throughout 
the  South.  It  would  be,  nevertheless,  a  wild  hyperbole 
to  describe  these  men  and  their  families  as  a  reading 


THE   SOUTH  195 

class;  there  was,  properly  speaking,  no  public  at  the 
South.  The  contents  of  the  magazine,  if  Foe's  exceptional 
work  in  its  first  two  years  be  excluded,  though  not  com- 
paring unfavorably  with  its  rivals  elsewhere,  are  exceed- 
ingly tame  and  dreary.  Local  pride  is  much  in  evidence, 
and  the  presence  of  provincial  reputations  is  acutely  felt; 
but  of  literature  there  is  truly  not  a  trace.  No  democracy 
ever  bred  such  a  mediocrity  of  talent  as  this  aristocrati- 
cally constructed  society.  For  one  thing  —  and  it  is  true 
of  the  whole  literary  past  of  the  South  —  there  is  no 
interest  in  ideas;  there  are  no  ideas.  There  had  been  a 
time  when  Voltaire  was  much  read  in  Virginia,  though 
the  traces  of  it  are  now  well  nigh  lost  in  the  dust-heap, 
and  there  had  been  radical  thinking  by  young  men;  but 
no  one  came  after  Voltaire.  Perhaps  this  is  the  funda- 
mental trouble,  after  all;  for  how  can  literature  flourish 
in  the  absence  of  ideas?  The  banality  of  the  question 
indicates  the  poverty  of  the  situation.  A  classical  up- 
bringing on  Horace,  a  library  of  ^'The  Spectator,''  'Wa- 
verley,"  and  Moore's  "Poems,"  taken  in  connection  with 
even  the  best  endeavor  to  achieve  Ciceronianism  or 
Addisonianism  or  any  other  imitatively  perfect  style, 
could  not  accomplish  much  by  themselves.  An  air  with- 
out ideas  is  the  deadliest  of  literary  atmospheres.  This 
was  perhaps  less  thoroughly  true  of  Virginia  than  of  the 
farther  South,  where  political  passion  was  more  absorbing 
as  time  swung  grimly  on.  The  great  age  of  Virginia  cul- 
minating in  the  glory  of  her  Presidents  had  gone  by,  and 
a  less  strenuous  race  had  succeeded;  but  the  men  of  South 
Carolina  were  stronger  than  their  fathers  had  been,  and 
the  climax  of  her  great  age  was  to  be  in  the  civil  war, 
towards  which  her  social  force  moved  for  a  generation 
with  towering  pride  and  fatal  certainty.    Yet  one  does 


196  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

not  find  about  Calhoun  an  intellectual  group,  nor  is  there 
anywhere  about  the  statesmen  of  the  Secession  that  air 
of  letters  and  philosophy  and  the  higher  interests  of  man 
which  was  so  marked  a  feature  of  the  Revolutionary  time. 
The  literary  state  of  this  later  period  is  most  fully  and 
characteristically  shown,  as  is  natural,  in  South  Carolina 
itself,  the  true  seat  of  Southern  power  then;  but  the 
lowness  of  the  ebb  is  keenly  apparent  in  the  fact  that  the 
illustrative  author  is  so  inferior  a  man  as  Simms. 

Simms  was  of  Irish  extraction,  to  which  was  due  his 
literary  gift,  and  the  strain  in  him  was  one  of  recent 
immigration.  The  South  had  little  part  in  his  making, 
and  gave  him  in  the  main  no  more  than  an  environment 
and  the  nucleus  of  a  fierce  local  patriotism.  He  was  not 
one  of  the  ruling  class,  but  the  child  of  an  adventurer 
who  himself  found  Charleston  unendurable,  and  went 
farther  into  the  Southwest  to  find  a  home  and  a  living. 
Simms  remained  behind  and  grew  up  in  the  neighborhood 
of  the  traditions  of  the  Revolution  and  the  backwoods- 
men. He  was  a  man  of  overflowing  animal  force,  self- 
assertive,  ambitious,  destined  to  be  self-made.  He  had 
poetical  susceptibility  and  dreaming  faculty,  a  Celtic  base 
in  him,  which  led  him  to  the  composition  of  facile  and 
feeble  poems;  but  drifting  off  into  fiction,  as  he  tried  his 
hand  at  all  kinds  of  writing,  he  finally  produced,  amid 
the  voluminous  output,  a  few  colonial  romances  by  which 
he  made  a  more  lasting  impression.  They  lack  those 
qualities  which  make  literature  of  a  book,  but  they  sur- 
vive by  virtue  of  their  raw  material,  which  has  both  his- 
torical and  human  truth;  and  in  certain  episodes  and 
scenes  he  shows  narrative  and  even  dramatic  power.  He 
followed  in  Cooper's  track  in  these  tales,  and  chose  the 
American  subject  near  to  him  in  the  life  of  his  part  of  the 


THE    SOUTH  197 

country  in  the  preceding  generations  of  its  conquest  from 
the  Indian  and  the  Briton.  The  tales  will,  therefore, 
always  retain  a  certain  importance  as  a  picture  of  social 
conditions  and  warfare.  He,  nevertheless,  did  not  find 
himself  accepted  and  honored  in  his  own  community.  He 
made  several  journeys  to  the  North,  and  had  many  friends 
among  the  literary  men  there,  and  published  his  books 
there.    The  North  was  his  outlet  into  the  world  of  letters. 

In  South  Carolina  it  was  felt  that  such  a  man  as 
Legare  was  the  proper  representative  of  Southern  culture. 
Literary  taste  still  clung  to  the  library;  it  has  the  con- 
servatism of  the  school-reader,  and  never  passed  the 
nonage  of  a  good  classical  pupil.  Contemporary  litera- 
ture, with  romantic  and  realistic  vigor,  however  closely 
allied  to  the  masters  of  the  North,  had  no  vogue.  It  was 
considered  that  a  Southern  literature  was  impossible.  The 
foolishness  of  Chivers  testifies  to  that  in  Georgia  no  less 
than  the  powerful  irascibility  of  Simms  in  South  Carolina. 
Yet,  with  wonderful  persistency,  magazine  after  maga- 
zine was  launched  at  Charleston,  had  its  callow  years  of 
feebleness,  and  died.  It  seemed  not  only  that  the  South 
could  produce  nothing  of  itself;  what  came  to  it  from 
contact  with  the  larger  world  of  English  speech  could  not 
take  root  in  that  soil.  A  few  books  of  humor,  long  ago 
extinct,  may  be  excepted;  but,  save  for  these,  the  con- 
dition of  the  country  beyond  Charleston  was  like  that  of 
the  Ohio  valley  and  the  Iowa  prairie  in  literary  desti- 
tution. Even  in  New  Orleans,  now  an  old  city,  there  was 
less  of  literature  than  in  Charleston  itself. 

It  is  sometimes  suggested  that  this  blight  which  fell  on 
the  literary  spirit  everywhere  in  the  South  affected  not 
only  the  reception  of  books  actually  written,  but  also 
the  development  of  such  minds  of  literary  capacity  as 


198  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

were  born  in  the  community;  that  there  was  a  discourage- 
ment of  genius  itself  in  the  fact  that  while  literature  in 
common  with  all  the  fine  arts  requires  an  open  career  and 
honor  for  the  poorest  in  social  position  and  opportunity, 
here  fixed  aristocratic  prejudice  and  materialistic  self- 
satisfaction  and  the  vanity  and  indifference  that  belong 
everywhere  to  irresponsible  wealth,  made  success  impos- 
sible. However  that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  literature  in 
the  South  had  by  the  time  of  the  civil  war  become  dead. 
The  position  of  Simms  as  the  representative  and  central 
figure  of  the  literary  life  there  is  made  the  more  promi- 
nent by  the  companionship  of  younger  men  in  his  latter 
days;  of  Timrod,  like  the  whippoorwill,  a  thin,  pathetic, 
twilight  note,  and  of  Hayne,  whom  one  would  rather 
liken  to  the  mocking-bird,  except  that  it  does  no  kind  of 
justice  to  the  bird.  With  them  the  literature  of  the  old 
South  ceased. 

There  remains  the  solitary  figure  of  Poe,  the  one  genius 
of  the  highest  American  rank,  who  belongs  to  the  South. 
It  is  common  to  deny  that  he  was  distinctively  a  Southern 
writer,  not  so  much  on  the  score  of  his  birth  at  Boston  as 
because  he  is  described  as  a  world-artist,  unrelated  to  his 
local  origin,  unindebted  to  it,  and  existing  in  a  cosmo- 
politan limbo,  denationalized,  almost  dehumanized.  But 
mortal  genius  always  roots  in  the  soil,  and  is  influenced 
and  usually  shaped  by  its  environment  of  birth,  education, 
and  opportunity.  It  appears  to  me  that  Poe  is  as  much 
a  product  of  the  South  as  Whittier  is  of  New  England. 
His  breeding  and  education  were  Southern,  his  manners, 
habits  of  thought,  and  moods  of  feeling  were  Southern; 
his  sentimentalism,  his  conception  of  womanhood  and  its 
qualities,  of  manhood  and  its  behavior,  his  weaknesses  of 
character,  bore  the  stamp  of  his  origin;  his  temperament 


THE   SOUTH  199 

even,  his  sensibility,  his  gloom  and  dream,  his  response 
to  color  and  music,  were  of  his  race  and  place.  It  is  true 
that  he  was  not  accepted  during  his  life  by  the  society  of 
Richmond  any  more  than  was  Simms  by  the  aristocracy 
of  Charleston.  But  the  indifference  of  an  aristocratic 
society  to  men  of  letters  not  in  its  own  set  is  no  new 
thing;  it  belongs  to  the  nature  of  such  society  the  world 
over.  It  is  more  germane  to  observe  that  Poe's  educa- 
tion, the  books  on  which  he  fed,  give  us  the  best  and 
fullest  evidence  available  as  to  the  kind  and  degree  of 
literary  culture  possible  to  any  Virginia  youth  of  talent, 
and  its  range  and  quality  serve  to  modify  our  idea  as 
to  the  nature  of  that  culture  in  the  South,  and  lead  us 
to  a  broader  and  truer  conception  of  intellectual  condi- 
tions there. 

It  does  not  appear  that  Poe  in  his  early  education  or 
in  the  accessibility  of  books  during  his  first  manhood  was 
at  any  disadvantage  with  his  contemporaries  in  the 
North;  the  difference  between  him  and  his  Southern  com- 
patriots was  that  he  made  the  fullest  use  of  his  oppor- 
tunities. He  fed  on  Byron,  Moore,  and  Coleridge,  and 
as  he  went  on  in  years  he  was  among  the  first  to  hail 
Tennyson  and  the  later  writers,  in  prose  as  well  as  verse, 
and  he  always  kept  pace  with  contemporaneous  produc- 
tions. He  did  this  before  he  left  the  South,  as  well  as 
afterwards.  He  stands  out  from  the  rest  because  he  had 
the  power  of  genius,  and  was  not,  like  Simms,  a  man  of 
talent  merely.  When  he  came  to  the  North,  where  he 
spent  his  mature  life,  he  brought  his  Southern  endow- 
ment with  him.  His  relations  with  women  were  still 
sentimental;  his  attitude  to  men,  his  warm  and  frank 
courtesies  to  friends,  his  bitter  angers  towards  others, 
his  speech,  garb,  and  demeanor  denoted  his  extraction. 


200  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

No  stranger  meeting  him  could  have  failed  to  recognize 
him  as  a  Southerner.  He  always  lived  in  the  North  as 
an  alien,  somewhat  on  his  guard,  somewhat  contemptuous 
of  his  surroundings,  always  homesick  for  the  place  that 
he  well  knew  would  know  him  no  more  though  he  were  to 
return  to  it.  In  his  letters,  in  his  conversations,  in  all 
reminiscences  of  him,  this  mark  of  the  South  on  him  is 
as  plain  as  in  his  color,  features,  and  personal  bearing. 

But,  though  this  be  granted,  and  there  is  no  gainsaying 
it,  it  is  universally  maintained  that  his  genius  was  desti- 
tute of  any  local  attachment.  I  shall  hardly  do  more 
than  suggest  a  contrary  view.  In  one  respect,  indeed,  he 
seems  wholly  apart  from  the  South.  He  was  a  critic,  with 
well-reasoned  standards  of  taste  and  art.  The  South  is 
uncritical.  The  power  of  criticism,  which  was  one  of  the 
prime  forces  of  modern  thought  in  the  last  century,  never 
penetrated  the  South.  There  was  never  any  place  there, 
nor  is  there  now,  for  minorities  of  opinion,  and  still  less 
for  individual  protest,  for  germinating  reform,  for  frank 
expression  of  a  view  differing  from  that  of  the  community. 
In  this  respect  the  South  was  as  much  cut  off  from  the 
modern  world,  and  still  is,  as  Ireland  is  from  England  in 
other  ways.  It  lies  outside  the  current  of  the  age,  and 
this  is  one  reason  why  there  was  such  an  absence  of  ideas 
in  its  life.  Poe,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  critic  of  inde- 
pendent mind  and  unsparing  expression.  Yet  it  is  notice- 
able that  he  never  criticised  a  Southern  writer  adversely, 
except  when  he  had  some  personal  animosity.  It  is  only 
to  be  added  that  Poe  was  a  critic  who  escaped  from  the 
environment  within  whose  limits  his  critical  power  would 
have  been  crushed.  But  in  his  imaginative  work,  is  it 
not  true  that  the  conception  of  character  and  incident  in 
such  tales  as  "William  Wilson,"  "The  Assignation,"  "The 


THE   SOUTH  201 

Cask  of  Amontillado"  are  distinctly  Southern?  Are  not 
all  his  women  in  the  romantic  tales  elaborations  of  sug- 
gestions from  Southern  types?  Is  not  "The  Fall  of  the 
House  of  Usher''  a  Southern  tale  at  the  core,  however 
theatrically  developed?  Poe  is  the  only  poet,  so  far  as 
I  know,  who  is  on  record  as  the  defender  of  human 
slavery.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  he  grew  up  in  a 
slave-holding  State.  There  are  traces  of  cruelty  in  Poe, 
of  patience  with  cruelty,  easy  to  find.  "The  Black  Cat" 
could  not  have  been  written  except  by  a  man  who  knew 
cruelty  well  and  was  hardened  to  it.  "The  Pit  and 
Pendulum"  belongs  in  the  same  class.  It  is  not  any  one 
of  these  items,  but  the  mass  of  them,  that  counts.  The 
morbid,  melancholy,  dark,  grewsome,  terrible,  in  Poe, 
seem  to  me  to  be  related  to  his  environment;  these  things 
sympathize  with  the  South,  in  all  lands,  with  Italy  and 
Spain;  as  the  Spaniard  is  plain  in  Cervantes,  it  may  well 
seem  that  the  Southerner  is  manifest  in  the  temper  of 
Poe's  imagination,  characterization,  incident,  atmosphere, 
and  landscape.  His  tendency  towards  musical  effects  is 
also  to  the  point.  So  Lanier  tried  to  obtain  such  effects 
from  landscape,  trees,  and  the  marsh,  though  Poe  is  free 
from  Lanier's  emotional  phases,  in  which  he  seems,  like 
Ixion,  embracing  the  cloud. 

Such,  in  brief,  are  some  of  the  reasons  that  may  justify 
one  in  seeing  in  Poe  a  great  expression  of  the  Southern 
temperament  in  letters.  He  certainly  is  the  lone  star  of 
the  South;  and  yet  it  may  eventually  prove  that  the  song 
of  Dixie  is  the  most  immortal  contribution  that  the  South 
has  given  to  the  national  literature. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    WEST 

The  West  has  ever  been  a  name  for  romance,  for  the 
place  of  discovery,  of  the  marvels  of  nature  feeding  the 
expectant  and  roused  curiosity  of  those  who  break  in  on 
great  solitudes,  of  heroic  human  forces  put  forth  to  take 
possession  and  to  go  on;  and  never  in  man's  history  was 
the  panorama  of  the  retreating  horizon  disclosed  so 
swiftly,  with  such  spectacular  changefulness,  as  in  the 
opening  of  the  American  continent,  when  veil  after  veil 
withdrew  —  the  dense  wilderness  of  the  Genesee  and  the 
southward  timberland,  the  open  prairies  of  the  vast  river- 
country,  the  long  roll  of  the  plains  of  the  Sunflower  trail, 
the  mountains,  the  deserts,  till  at  last,  with  descents  of 
loveliness,  the  scene  debouched  at  the  Golden  Gate  of 
the  Pacific.  Never  since  the  Hellenes  first  looked  on  the 
Mediterranean  had  there  been  such  a  moment  of  beauty 
and  power  in  the  great  human  migration.  Immensity  and 
diversity  strove  with  each  other  in  the  century-long  reve- 
lation. To  our  backward  look  the  land  is  full  of  adven- 
turous experience;  the  river-voyagers,  the  fur-traders,  the 
explorers,  the  gold-hunters  are  like  nomadic  waves  over 
it;  the  Indian  is  hardly  more  than  an  incident,  like  ante- 
lope and  buffalo,  so  much  is  the  imagination  taken  with 
the  white  man's  life  in  such  surroundings.  It  is  of  this 
national  mise-en-scdne,  this  race-energy,  that  those  old- 
fashioned  writers  thought  who  used  to  demand  of  us  a 
literature  "on  the  same  scale  as  the  country."    But  no 

202 


THE   WEST  203 

nation  yet  ever  produced  literature  in  the  time  of  its 
settlement  on  the  soil,  and  our  history  conforms  to  this 
old  record.  The  legend-breeding  time  has  gone,  and  no 
legend  yet  appears;  and  in  its  place  has  come,  all  glamour 
scattered,  the  West  that  is  built  in  the  love  of  home  more 
than  in  the  love  of  gold,  banded  by  railways,  knotted  with 
great  cities,  and  filled  far  and  wide  with  the  peace  of 
natural  labor,  domesticity,  education;  and  the  land  settles 
to  its  rest. 

Argonaut  or  pioneer,  early  or  late,  of  whatever  stripe 
of  adventurer,  the  first  wanderers  were  no  makers  of 
books.  The  scientific  explorers  left  important  works  of 
the  highest  interest  in  their  sphere,  but  they  owned 
neither  the  style  nor  the  matter  of  literature.  History 
waited  for  Parkman.  The  part  that  books  held  in  the 
farms,  villages,  and  towns  which  grew  up  in  the  settle- 
ment was  the  same  as  in  the  original  communities  from 
which  the  emigrants  came.  The  broad  northward  sweep 
of  the  New  England  trail  was  thick  with  the  transplanted 
pulpit,  school,  and  ideas  of  the  old  Puritan  coast;  the 
stream  from  Pennsylvania  and  the  Southeast  was  less 
marked  with  intellectual  traits.  Literature  was  still  an 
instrument  of  the  practical  life,  including  morality  in  that 
term;  it  fed  the  sermon,  informed  the  political  debate, 
and  gathered  especially  about  the  newspaper  press  and 
the  numerous  growth  of  feeble  and  short-lived  periodicals. 
Certain  regions  were  especially  favored,  in  particular  the 
country  of  the  Western  Reserve  in  northern  Ohio  and  a 
little  tract  of  Indiana  where,  within  a  county's  breadth, 
were  born  the  greater  number  of  Western  writers  who 
achieved  reputation  in  the  second  half  of  the  last  century. 
There  was,  too,  a  Unitarian  outpost  at  Louisville,  in 
Kentucky,  and  a  literary  spirit  there  and  an  opportunity 


204  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

for  education,  which  made  that  the  most  cultivated  city 
of  the  South  beyond  the  Alleghanies,  though  it  was  still 
too  nigh  the  Southern  blight  to  reap  to  the  full  the  fruits 
of  early  advantage.  Poe,  by  virtue  of  his  journalistic 
interest,  reached  farther  with  the  circle  of  his  correspon- 
dence than  any  of  his  contemporaries,  and  he  touched 
St.  Louis,  on  the  extreme  hem  of  possible  literary  enter- 
prise. 

Throughout  all  this  area  school,  seminary,  academy, 
college,  and  what  has  since  grown  into  the  University, 
were  part  and  parcel  of  the  life  of  the  State,  the  denomina- 
tions and  the  ambitious  and  enterprising  youth;  and  light 
belles-lettres,  such  as  Prentiss  cultivated  and  Thomas 
collected,  fluttered  pale  and  premature  in  the  complaisant 
press;  but  there  was  no  true  original  growth.  The  litera- 
ture of  tradition,  used  for  traditionary  purposes  in  tradi- 
tionary ways,  was  still  the  only  literature  with  mastering 
power;  what  was  newly  produced  was  either  compounded 
of  the  old  or  weakly  imitated  it.  As  the  settlement  moved 
farther  West,  towards  and  beyond  the  great  barriers,  the 
intellectual  life  took  on  more  and  more  the  character  of 
missionary  enterprise,  such  as  Starr  King  stood  for  in 
California.  In  these  vast  stretches,  under  a  sky  that  of 
itself  would  have  generated  again  the  heavenly  Zeus  in 
a  pre-Christian  race,  amid  a  land  where  elemental  gran- 
deurs are  closer  to  mankind  than  they  have  been  since 
the  primitive  world,  the  imagination  remained  unstirred 
to  expression,  and  the  book  carried  into  the  waste  was 
the  Mormon  Bible.  It  is  not  strange.  It  is  only  one 
more  manifestation  of  the  fact  that  a  race  which  has  be- 
gun to  write  is  already  old;  literature  flowers  only  from 
a  stock  long  planted  in  the  earth;  it  may  be  carried  to 
a  new  soil,  but  it  bears  the  true  blossom  of  that  soil  only 


THE   WEST  205 

after  centuries  of  absorption.  Literature  as  an  instru- 
ment of  the  practical  life  the  West  always  had  in  full 
measure,  as  the  coast  colonies  had  possessed  it  and  em- 
ployed it;  imagination,  in  its  practical  function  to  plan 
a  nation,  and  in  its  sympathetic  activities  to  bind  society 
together,  and  with  the  past  and  future,  it  also  had  and 
used;  but  the  ideal  imagination,  the  power  to  recast  truth 
and  remake  the  world,  had  not  arrived  in  the  West,  nor, 
indeed,  has  it  ever  arrived  there.  The  whole  great 
country,  with  all  its  civilization,  its  prosperity,  its  edu- 
cation—  all  its  immeasurable  success  in  the  practical 
sphere  of  what  is  necessary  and  wholesome  for  the  entire 
life  of  man  in  body  and  mind  —  has  not  produced  so 
much  in  literature  for  the  world  as  have  the  Russian 
steppes;  and,  like  Turgenieff,  Bret  Harte  lived  abroad, 
and  Joaquin  Miller,  like  Tolstoi*,  was  a  hermit-dreamer 
at  home. 

The  earliest  stir  of  original  literary  impulse  in  the  West 
was  by  way  of  humor.  The  population  was  a  gathering 
of  strongly  marked  race-types  from  many  lands,  a 
museum  and  nursery  of  incongruities;  the  new  environ- 
ment was  an  added  element  of  contrast  in  a  society 
quickly  adapting  itself  to  changed  and  strange  conditions; 
freedom  of  life  gave  the  rein  to  forceful  eccentricity  and 
to  weakness  of  foible  and  foolishness.  Many  a  man  found 
his  true  character  in  a  day,  who,  under  the  pressure  of 
social  convention,  insincere  profession,  and  the  general 
tyranny  of  what  was  expected  of  him,  might  in  his  birth- 
place never  have  suspected  his  own  existence;  and  no 
effective  secrecy  was  possible  in  the  all-revealing  air  of 
that  character-testing  struggle.  Under  such  circum- 
stances humor  emerged  as  a  saving  grace.  Laughter  was 
bred  into  the  people;  it  solved  many  situations,  it  lessened 


2o6  AMERICA   IN  LITERATURE 

the  friction  of  close  personal  contact,  it  made  for  peace, 
being  the  alternative  for  ill-nature  or  a  blow.  The  con- 
stancy of  it  shows  its  spontaneity.  In  the  camps  of  the 
miner,  on  the  river  steamboats,  in  the  taverns  of  the 
court  circuit,  there  sprang  up  inexhaustible  anecdotes, 
rallies  of  wit,  yarns,  and  fanciful  lies  and  jokes  on  the 
dullard  or  the  stranger.  If  it  be  true  that  our  unliterary 
humorists  were  rather  a  newspaper  product  of  the  East, 
and  that  they  took  origin  from  some  of  these  same  ele- 
ments, it  was,  nevertheless,  in  the  West  that  American 
humor  most  flourished,  for  there  the  conditions  were 
found  united.  It  was  as  if  all  the  world  had  gone  on  a 
picaresque  journey  by  general  consent  in  various  quarters, 
and  at  the  chance  round-up  for  nightly  rest  and  refresh- 
ment fell  to  telling  what,  and  especially  whom,  they  had 
met  with.  Out  of  this  atmosphere  came  Lincoln,  our 
greatest  practical  humorist,  with  that  marvelous  power, 
turning  all  he  touched  to  wisdom;  and  on  the  free,  imagi- 
native side,3^ark  Twaii\,  our  capital  example,  was  blood 
and  bone  of  this  Western  humor.  He  is  its  climax,  al- 
though, fun  for  fun^s  sake  being  his  rule,  he  often  goes 
sprawling,  for  fim  seldom  stands  alone;  for  long  life  it 
has  to  mate  with  something,  to  blend  with  other  elements, 
as  in  the  great  humorists.  Truth  must  touch  it,  as  in 
Lincoln^s  case,  or  character,  as  in  Shakespeare's,  before 
it  goes  home  to  the  mark.  In  its  living  forms  in  the  West, 
character  was  always  near  to  it,  and  a  Franklin-like 
lesson  was  often  its  honey.  Extravaganza  is  a  kind  of 
practical  joke  on  the  mind,  and  with  other  practical  jokes 
falls  to  a  secondary  place.  Humor  that  mixes  with  the 
truth  of  life  is  the  better  bread.  In  the  West  there  was 
one  omnipresent  element  with  which  it  had  natural  affinity 
—  the  quality  of  picturesqueness.     This  existed  in  all 


THE   WEST  207 

forms,  in  character,  incident,  and  setting.  It  was  a  fore- 
gone conclusion  that  when  the  artist  came  he  would  com- 
bine these  —  humor  and  picturesqueness  —  with  each 
other,  and  both  with  romance. 

The  artist  came  in  Bret  Harte.     He  was  not,  like  i 
Mark  Twain,  born  of  the  stuff  in  which  he  worked.    His  I 
artTs  not  that  of  the  native  life  becoming  conscious  of  j 
itself  and  finding  original  expression.    He  was  a  visitor  j 
from  the  outer  world.  Eastern-born  and  Eastern-bred. 
The  son  of  a  Greek  professor  who  taught  in  a  college  at 
Albany,  in  New  York,  he  grew  up  in  a  library,  bred  on 
literature  from  boyhood,  when  alone  such  breeding  takes, 
with  his  brain  stuffed  carelessly  with  the  best  English 
humor  and  romance,  and,  indeed,  if  "Don  Quixote,  "Gil 
Bias,"  "The  Arabian  Nights,"  and  "Tales  of  the  Genii" 
be  added,  the  best  in  the  world.    Still  a  stripling  youth, 
he  was  flung  into  the  Californian  ferment,  impressionable 
and  sharp  to  observe,  with  eyes  trained  on  contempo- 
raneous man  under  the  tutelage  of  the  art  of  Dickens, 
with  its  large  resources  of  comedy,  sentiment,  and  kindli- 
ness.   He  had  shown  the  literary  gift  from  childhood;  he 
could  meditate  his  experience,  brood  over  his  creatures 
and  love  them,  and  his  skill  in  language  was  fine  to  serve 
his  ends.    The  relaxed  moral  strain  of  convention  about 
him  loosed  his  tongue  and  let  him  have  his  say  of  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  within  him.    The  environment  was  1 
crowded  with  artistic  elements,  and  he  began  to  select,  I 
with  directness  and  simplicity,  and  combine  and  create; 
and,  without  knowing  it,  he  had  fdund  the  gold  that  grows 
not  dim  and  melts  not  away.    His  graphic  power  was 
great;  the  vividness  of  the  scenes,  the  sharpness  of  the 
character,  the  telling  force  of  the  incident,  the  reality  of 
the  talk^  the  simple  depth  of  the  sentiment^  made  up  a 


i 


2o8  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

body  of  human  truth,  clear,  picturesque,  sincere,  and 
homespun,  which  went  at  once  to  the  heart. 
j      It  is  maintained,  perhaps  generally,  that  Bret  Harte's 
I  tales  are  pure  inventions,  and  that  what  he  describes  had 
no  actual  existence  in  the  mining  country.    He  himself 
/  asserted  the  contrary,  saying  that  he  found  in  reality  the 
starting-point  of  both  character  and  incident;  and  I  be- 
lieve him.    The  limitations  of  his  genius  lead  me  to  do 
I  so.     He  lacked  power  of  the  sort  that  constructs  and 
i  feeds  from  fecund  observation  and  sympathy  a  great 
i  novel;  though  he  accomplished  all  that  his  specific  ma- 
terial was  capable  of,  in  verse,  his  poetry  is  tame  when 
he  leaves  his  peculiar  ground;  his  distinction  lies  in  his 
!  short  tales,  and  he  continued  through  life  to  work  the 
same  narrow  vein;   this  argues  adherence  to  a  known 
1  subject,  dependence  on  experience  and  memory,  the  pres- 
ence of  a  basis  of  actuality.    A  free  imagination,  in  the 
sense  of  irresponsible  invention,  would  have  been  less 
trammelled. 

Indeed,  it  is  Bret  Harte's  artistic  truth  that  constitutes 
the  novelty  and  charm  of  his  work,  and  makes  its  way 
in  the  wide  world,  far  from  the  caiions  where  it  was 
cradled.    It  has  democratic  power.    The  vital  persistence 
of  human  nature  in  men  and  women,  the  primitive  emo- 
tions and  virtues  of  our  kind  still  instinctively  put  forth, 
to  comfort  and  support  life  in  comradery,  independent  of 
civilization  left  behind,  and  institutions  dropped  out,  and 
.   the  habits  of  orderly  society  disused  —  the  man  in  his 
I   natural  manhood,  the  woman  in  her  natural  womanhood 
i   — this  is  the  core  of  the  life  he  sets  forth;  and  the  hu- 
i   man  qualities  in  his  tales  have  their  brilliancy  of  tone  and 
effect,  because  they  are  so  disengaged  from  convention, 
institution,  use  and  wont,  and  show  the  clear  grain. 


THE   WEST  209 

Character  is  the  mark  he  aims  at,  and  unless  character 
has  truth,  it  is  naught.  He  had  seen  men  in  undress; 
and  though  he  noticed  the  costume  and  the  drawl,  the 
shabby  or  miserable  detail,  still,  for  his  eyes,  the  man 
remained,  and  was  the  absorbing  object  of  his  inter- 
preting art.  This  is,  in  literature,  to  have  democratic 
power. 

With  it  goes  the  philanthropic  instinct,  the  wish  to 
bring  out  the  man  hidden  there,  obscure  in  the  caking  of 
circumstance,  of  the  working-day  world,  of  slovenliness, 
of  vice  and  crime,  and  to  make  him  appear  in  his  original 
human  nature,  above  the  drudge,  the  loafer,  the  criminal 
that  he  is  to  the  casual  eye  and  the  hard  mind.  Tolera- 
tion, which  goes  hand-in-hand  with  personal  liberty,  and 
is  its  unfailing  companion,  is  a  necessary  ingredient  in 
his  human  art  —  the  art,  it  need  hardly  be  said,  of 
Dickens,  for  Bret  Harte  derives  from  Dickens  as  plainly 
as  Irving  from  Goldsmith,  and  Cooper  from  Scott,  and 
he  gracefully  acknowledged  his  indebtedness.  It  is  those 
who  condemn  the  art  of  Dickens  as  tawdry,  sentimental, 
deformed  by  caricature,  that  see  no  reality  in  Bret  Harte. 

The  same  persons  sneer  at  the  whole  range  of  humane 
effort  from  black  suffrage  to  criminal  reform  as  senti- 
mentality, and  have  yet  to  learn  the  lesson  of  democracy 
—  so  hard  as  it  is  for  the  artificial  man,  who,  even  in  a 
republic,  is  the  man  of  caste,  to  believe  that  God  has 
sown  human  nature  as  wide  as  the  daisies,  as  numerous 
as  the  waves,  and  made  earth  noble  with  its  mtiltitude 
as  the  heaven  with  stars. 

Bret  Harte  represents  indestructible  courage  and  love 
as  natural  elements  in  man's  bosom,  shown  in  action  and 
self -forgetful  virtue,  and  always  respected  by  the  on- 
lookers, however  vulgar,  unkempt,  debauched;   and  he 


210  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

j  blends  this  eternal  moral  with  comedy,  and  even  gro- 
tesqueness,  without  tarnishing  it.  The  West  gave  him  all 
the  human  garniture  of  the  scene  in  character,  incident, 
and  the  action's  glow;  and  it  must  be  believed,  too,  that 
as  in  local  color  he  was  faithful  to  his  material,  he  was 
also  a  true  representative  of  the  Western  spirit  in  this 
democratic,  philanthropic,  tolerant  art,  by  means  of 
which  his  youthful  temperament,  highly  cultivated  by 
letters  as  it  had  been,  found  imaginative  embodiment. 
This  humorous  romancer,  gentle,  tender,  hospitable,  and 
just,  so  finely  sensitive  to  the  unspoken  pathos  of  the 
hard,  starved,  brutal  lot  of  the  miner's  life,  was,  in  spirit 
as  well  as  in  the  literal  facts,  an  exponent  of  the  new 
world's  story  —  an  American  in  every  fibre.  Otherwise 
his  reputation  would  hardly  have  exceeded  the  limits  of 
his  editorial-room,  and  spread  not  only  through  the  East, 
but  abroad.  England  would  not  have  continued  to  read 
his  writings  after  his  own  land  had  tired  of  them.  He 
j  made  a  universal  appeal,  though  working  always  through 
'  a  local  type  of  no  great  range  of  character  or  adventure; 
he  did  this  by  fidelity  to  primitive  human  feelings  in 
natures  so  deep  and  simple  that  their  profound  truth 
almost  escapes  observation  in  the  powerful  impression 
they  make,  and,  of  course,  much  is  masked  by  his 
artistic  method.  He  is  more  than  the  sketcher  of  a 
passing  phase  of  pioneer  days  in  the  gold  mountains; 
that  would  be  little  enough;  he  created  lasting  pictures 
of  human  life,  some  of  which  have  the  eternal  outline 
and  pose  of  a  Theocritean  idyl.  The  supreme  nature  of 
his  gift  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  he  had  no  rival  and  left 
no  successor.  His  work  is  as  unique  as  that  of  Poe  or 
Hawthorne. 

One  other  author  bears  the  characteristics  of  the  West 


THE  WEST  211 

on  his  imagination.  Joaquin  Miller  had  the  endowment 
of  a  poet,  and  has  taken^upTnto  his  verse  the  physical 
atmosphere  of  the  great  solitudes,  and  the  free  career  of 
life  led  amid  them.  The  ranges,  the  deserts,  the  sweep  of 
the  plains,  the  flood  of  burning  light,  the  glory  of  color, 
are  all  caught  in  his  framing  lines;  the  startling  phe- 
nomena of  torrent  and  blazing  prairie,  and  the  sudden 
catastrophes  of  the  cattle-lands  are  there;  the  scene, 
illimitable  and  lonely,  where  life  is  but  a  speck,  is  mirrored 
both  physically  and  in  feeling;  but  often  his  muse  itself 
seems  lost  in  the  vastness.  His  gift  is  lyrical,  not 
dramatic,  and  nature  is  more  than  man  in  it;  yet  the 
human  Hfe  he  renders  is  also  appropriate.  It  is  a  life 
that  is  only  the  passion  of  living,  a  loose  of  energy,  un- 
bridled, fearless,  maddened  by  its  own  liberty;  its  body 
is  sensation,  or  such  action  as  is  only  sensation  in  an- 
other form  —  an  intoxication  with  the  stream  of  life  flow- 
ing through  the  man;  it  is  clear  emotion,  and  laughs  at 
all  convention  and  restraint  —  the  freedom  of  the  outlaw, 
the  filbuster,  the  desperado.  So  far  as  there  is  any  specific 
local  color,  the  Spanish-Mexican  predominates  in  both 
landscape  and  character;  and  the  latter,  except  in  the 
point  of  passion,  is  rather  an  affair  of  the  accoutrements 
—  the  horse  is  more  than  the  man.  He  is  a  riding  poet, 
of  course;  the  lope  of  the  prairies  is  in  his  fine  lines,  and 
is  the  best  part  of  them.  There  is  a  clear  poetic  power 
here,  atmospheric,  pictorial,  deep-breathed;  one  wonders 
at  the  seeming  barrenness,  not  to  say  paucity,  of  the  re- 
sult. The  whole  is  a  monotone;  there  is  the  same  lover, 
the  same  maiden  —  the  same  wild  grandeur  of  nature, 
the  same  sense  of  the  infinite  in  both,  the  universe  with- 
out and  the  passion  of  living  beating  within,  and  this 
harmony  of  combination  once  established  is  never  varied 


212  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

from,  though  sometimes  it  is  given  by  fragments  instead 
of  in  its  completeness. 

The  part  of  Byron  in  it  is  manifest,  for  Joaquin  Miller 
goes  back  to  Byron,  as  Bret  Harte  does  to  Dickens;  and 
if  it  is  curious  to  observe  Byronism,  the  offspring  of 
continental  despairs,  stamp  an  image  of  itself,  in  how- 
ever lower  a  degree,  in  the  untamed  life  of  the  West,  this 
is  evidence  how  constant  and  instinctive  in  the  world  of 
society,  under  its  present  conditions,  is  that  mood  for 
which  Byronism  gave  the  imaginative  and  sentimental 
formulas  in  all  lands  of  modern  civilization.  The  delight 
in  elemental  grandeur,  the  love  of  freedom,  which  were 
the  noblest  traits  of  Byron,  exist  here  in  less  power,  or  in 
their  less  excellent  forms;  on  the  human  side  man  is,  in 
this  verse,  of  the  pirate  t5^e,  and  woman  has  Turkish 
mobility,  while  the  melodramatic  pose  of  both  action  and 
passion,  and  the  note  of  egotistic  melancholy,  are  leading 
features;  such  is  the  literary  tradition  followed,  and  it  is 
secondary  in  the  work. 

What  is  primary  is  easily  perceived  —  the  sense  of  the 
mighty  landscape,  the  enthusiasm  for  its  great  phases, 
the  delight  in  the  adventurous  occupations  of  the  men,  the 
lust  of  life  in  the  wild  open;  the  poet  handles  these  things 
best  because  he  loves  them.  The  secondary,  Byronic 
elements,  enter  the  verse  only  to  impair  it;  and  this 
happens  especially  in  the  realm  of  character  which  turns 
theatrical.  In  "The  Arizonian"  —  the  most  striking 
portrait —  vivid  and  suggestive  as  much  as  it  is,  by 
means  of  color,  music,  and  feeling,  the  poet  misses  the 
type,  and  brings  it  out  flattened  and  defaced.  "With 
Walker  in  Nicaragua,"  the  best  poem,  though  in  Byron's 
manner,  has  also  a  quality  of  its  own,  a  verve  and  motion 
which  make  it  sure  of  just  appreciation;  and  one  cannot 


THE   WEST  213 

help  thinking  that  had  it  been  found  in  some  old  French 
manuscript,  as  a  chanson  of  some  Norman  filibuster  in  the 
pirate  African  seas,  it  would  be  the  delight  of  poets  and 
the  treasure  trove  of  scholars.  But  there  was  some  lack 
of  power  in  Joaquin  Miller  which  denied  to  him  the  sum- 
mation of  his  qualities  in  the  concentrated  creative 
faculty.  His  monotone,  with  all  its  sonority,  dulls  the 
ear,  as  his  color  wearies  the  eye;  the  senses,  overtired, 
cease  to  act,  and  the  mind  has  not  been  awakened.  One 
misses  the  strong,  intellectual  force  that  lay  back  of  all 
Byron's  work,  and  the  landscapes  of  Arizona  are  no  sub- 
stitute for  it. 

What  of  reality  there  was  in  Joaquin  Miller's  work  it 
would  be  a  subtle  matter  to  define,  for  actual  things 
suffer  strange  transformations  in  a  true  poet's  mind,  with- 
out losing  their  original  nature.  He  loved  the  Western 
country  with  native  passion;  once,  it  is  true,  a  will-o'-the- 
wisp  of  fame  drew  him  across  the  Atlantic  to  wander 
about  the  Mediterranean  and  to  pose  in  London  drawing 
rooms,  but  his  heart  never  strayed  from  it  own  natural 
horizon.  He  is  opposed  to  Bret  Harte  in  one  capital 
point:  the  latter  drew  the  characters  he  knew  just  as  he 
knew  them,  still  in  the  toils  of  work,  chance,  and  circum- 
stance, in  the  bonds  of  men  living  together  for  good  or  ill, 
in  the  necessary  ways  of  social  beings;  but  Joaquin  Miller 
endeavored  to  interpret  that  ideal  of  the  free  life,  beyond 
the  toils  and  out  of  the  bonds,  which  is  one  conception  of 
Western  opportunity  and  practice  —  the  life  without  a 
rein.  The  instinct  from  which  the  dream  springs  is 
fundamental  in  mankind ;  it  has  sent  hermits  to  the  desert, 
yeomen  to  the  greenwood,  and  gallants  to  the  Spanish' 
Main  out  of  mind;  and  on  the  great  plains  and  in  the 
canyons  it  has  had  its  adventurers.    In  literature  it  be- 


214  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

longs  especially  with  that  beatification  of  Nature  which 
took  place  in  the  Revolutionary  times;  and  the  eagle 
and  the  lion  and  the  ''noble  savage"  were  supposed 
to  exemplify  its  blessedness.  It  is  a  false  dream, 
because  restraint  is  the  law  of  both  man's  power 
and  his  happiness;  but  it  has  always  had  its  fol- 
lowers, a  crew  of  men  longing  for  it  and  striving  after 
it  in  the  reckless  vigor  of  young  manhood;  and  such  men, 
such  a  spirit,  there  were  in  the  Western  conquest.  Joaquin 
Miller  catches  some  of  the  traits,  the  impulses,  the  joys 
of  it;  but  in  rendering  it  by  means  of  the  Byron  conven- 
tion, peopling  the  lone  landscape  with  the  operatic  ghosts 
of  Conrad  and  Haidee,  he  gives  such  an  impression  of 
falsity  that  what  truth  there  may  be  escapes.  It  is  only 
where  the  touch  of  personal  experience  is  plain,  where  the 
individualization  exceeds  the  power  of  imitative  fancy  to 
conjure,  where  the  horse  is  felt  under  the  rider,  and  a 
man's  hand  in  the  grasp  of  a  man,  as  in  the  Nicaragua 
tale,  that  this  life  and  this  spirit  realizes  itself  as  some- 
thing that  might  have  been.  Wherever  the  truth  may  lie, 
as  to  the  reality  of  the  inspiration  and  the  interpretation, 
it  will  remain  Joaquin  Miller's  peculiar  trait  that  he  alone 
has  attempted  to  transfer  to  imagination  this  emotional 
phase  of  the  West,  which  lies  so  nigh  to  all  romancing 
thoughts  of  the  free  life  there;  if  it  turns  to  melodrama  in 
his  hands,  it  should  be  remembered  that  it  has  done  the 
same  in  the  hands  of  all  poets,  at  all  times.  Those  who 
are  restless  under  society,  and  are  fond  to  imagine  wild 
freedom,  and  to  think  of  its  place  as  in  the  uncivilized 
tracts  of  earth,  will  continue  to  find  in  his  verse  one  pas- 
sionate record  of  what  they  seek. 

A  third  author.  Lew  Wallace,  felt  the  influence  of  the 
romantic  West,  acting  on  his  historical  imagination. 


THE   WEST  215 

"The  Fair  God,"  a  story  of  the  Aztecs,  holds  no  great 
place  in  our  literature;  but  it  was  in  this  tale  that  the 
author  first  exercised  his  invention,  and  that  it  was  due 
to  his  Southwestern  experience  is  certain.  Oriental  traits 
are  recognizable  injoaquin  Miller;  there  are  touches  of 
Arabia  in  his  lines;  and  the  coloring  and  atmosphere  of 
Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  the  blend  of  Spanish  antiquity 
in  the  landscape,  were  in  some  sort  a  preparation  in  Lew 
Wallace  for  his  treatment  of  the  Scriptural  times  and 
scenes  in  the  work  by  which  he  is  known,  "Ben  Hur." 
This  story,  too,  hardly  rises  into  the  domain  of  literature, 
but  the  pietistic  romance  has  always  been  popular  in  our 
communities,  and  should  be  reckoned  with  in  an  account 
of  our  literary  life.  At  an  earlier  date  domesticity  afforded 
the  substance  and  sphere  of  this  novel  as  in  "The  Wide, 
Wide  World";  but,  in  Lew  Wallace's  rendering,  history 
took  its  place,  and,  on  the  whole,  the  appropriate  history. 
He  derives,  it  is  true  —  for  all  our  authors  have  a  sponsor 
—  from  Victor  Hugo  in  the  main  and  characteristically, 
though  he  lies,  of  course,  also  in  the  general  stream  of 
historical  fiction;  and  it  would  be  futile  to  seek,  in  his 
stirring  tale  of  races  long  gone  by,  the  stamp  of  Western 
civilization,  except  so  far  as  it  was  absorbed  by  the  West 
in  common  with  the  whole  country.  But  it  is  not  fanciful 
to  find  in  his  impressions  of  the  Western  land  that  original 
sympathy  which,  in  his  genius,  was  to  find  so  foreign  and 
distant  material.  Such  works  as  he  wrote  —  and  they 
have  been  described  as  apart  from  all  American  life  — 
are  brooded  over  in  long  solitude,  and  proceed  from  very 
deep  and  elemental  impressions  of  a  vast  world.  It  is,  at 
least,  noticeable  that  the  third  writer  of  the  West  was, 
like  Bret  Harte  and  Joaquin  Miller,  a  romancer  pure  and 
simple.    The  mood,  the  point  of  view,  the  temperament 


2i6  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

belong  to  the  Western  environment,  so  far  as  it  is  an  en- 
vironment of  the  imagination,  and  a  great  gulf  divides 
these  three  writers  from  all  others  who  have  been  charac- 
teristically of  that  part  of  the  country.  They  stamp  the 
enduring  literature  of  the  early  West  as  romantic  to  the 
core.  It  is  true  that  the  settled  and  civilized  West  —  the 
West  of  the  railways  and  the  cities  and  the  colleges  —  has 
also  now  produced  books;  its  glades  and  birds  have  had 
their  poets,  its  country  towns  and  traveled  roads  their 
novelists,  sweet  in  melody,  admirable  in  realistic  render- 
ing, the  sincere  and  honest  work  of  our  own  generation; 
but  they  fall  outside  the  limits  of  this  survey,  and  may  be 
left  to  later  critics  of  a  new  time.  Within  the  limits  here 
maintained,  the  nascent  literature  of  the  West  lay  wholly 
in  the  fortunes  of  these  three  romancers,  each  in  his  sphere 
of  the  tale,  the  poems,  and  the  novel  —  Bret  Harte, 
Joaquin  Miller,  and  Lew  Wallace. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    ACHIEVEMENT 

If  it  were  true,  according  to  the  old  saying,  which  is  by 
some  reputed  wise,  that  the  nation  is  happiest  which  has 
no  history,  the  same  maxim  might  hold  good  of  a  people 
without  a  literature;  for  literature  in  its  great  forms  is 
in  some  sort  connected  with  times  of  national  stress  and 
upheaval,  and  genius,  which  is  its  medium,  is  made  active 
by  a  similar  unrest  and  excitement  in  itself.  The 
secondary  character  of  American  literature  in  its  first 
century,  its  inferiority  in  mass  and  quality  to  the  con- 
temporary productions  of  England  and  France,  is  every- 
where acknowledged ;  and  the  youthf  ulness  of  our  national 
life,  our  absorption  in  material  and  professional  pursuits, 
in  subduing  nature  and  applying  self-government  and  de- 
veloping economic  and  social  relations,  and  generally  in 
finding  ourselves,  which  is  the  business  of  youth,  besides 
many  other  similar  considerations,  are  alleged  as  con- 
current causes  of  this  delayed  and  incomplete  success  in 
literary  creation.  In  any  exposition  of  our  national 
achievements  of  the  last  century  the  fine  arts,  and  among 
them  literature,  would  occupy  a  small  corner  in  compara- 
tive importance  when  set  in  competition  with  the  general 
results  of  our  total  human  labor.  Perhaps  one  reason  for 
this,  as  good  as  any  of  those  just  summarized,  is  the  pros- 
perity, the  usually  regular  and  free  movement  of  develop- 
ment, in  a  word,  the  happiness  of  the  people  —  the  general 
peace,  the  absence  of  revolt,  of  sudden  and  profound 

217 


2i8  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

change  in  ideal  ends,  of  revolutionary  aspiration,  of  all 
that  makes  for  desperate  battle  and  deep  desire  in  the 
spirit  of  man.  Great  as  our  political  and  social  growth 
has  been,  powerful  and  broad  as  the  forces  of  humanity 
and  freedom  have  shown  themselves,  and  deepening  down 
with  wider  inclusions  among  the  whole  body  politic,  the 
marvelous  thing  has  been  the  gentleness  of  the  process 
on  the  whole;  only  one  principle  was  "rained  in  blood," 
and  the  dawn,  save  for  that,  was  without  the  traditional 
"thunderpeal"  of  a  new  age.  And  what  is  true  of  national 
life  is  true  also  of  individual  genius;  our  men  of  letters, 
taken  together,  have  been  men  of  quietness. 

The  great  European  movement  of  the  last  century  in 
literature,  on  the  other  hand,  was  that  romanticism  which 
was  the  blossoming  bower  where  the  blood  of  the  Revolu- 
tion was  turned  to  forms  of  beauty  and  passion  and  mar- 
vel; its  leaders  were  restlessly  alive,  and  remote  as  their 
work  in  imagination  and  intellect  and  sentiment  might 
be  from  anything  obtusely  political  or  social,  verse  and 
prose  alike  were  fed  from  careers  of  moral,  intellectual, 
emotional  strife,  from  a  movement  in  the  minds  of  men 
seeking  new  gods  and  revealing  new  gospels  in  every  part 
of  man's  and  nature's  life.  It  is  a  vain  task  to  look  for 
anything  corresponding  to  this  in  the  literature  of  our 
era  of  good  feeling,  although,  as  we  were  an  intellectually 
dependent  and  colonial-minded  people  and  importers  of 
literary  fashions,  some  traces  of  the  romantic  revolution 
may  be  found  in  our  earlier  books;  but  these  are  truly 
"naught,"  if  the  scale  of  the  century  be  applied  to  them. 
The  early  American  romance,  with  which  our  imaginative 
prose  began,  however  interesting  to  ourselves  historically 
and  to  a  literary  student  as  an  illustration  of  taste,  was  an 
offshoot  of  the  operatic  and  sentimental  tale,  the  wonder^ 


THE  ACHIEVEMENT  ii0 

novel  and  its  congeners  in  the  radical  school,  and  was 
secondary  to  the  works  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  Godwin,  and 
Lewis.  Charles  Brockden  Brown's  novels,  which  have  re- 
sisted resurrection  more  pertinaciously  than  any  other 
victim  of  the  publishers'  mania  for  the  uncopyrighted, 
marked  a  moment,  but  marked  it  with  a  grave  instead  of 
an  immortality;  and  Allston,  with  his  thin  Monaldi,  and 
the  elder  Dana,  with  his  Byron-Bulwer  stripe,  exhaust 
the  list  of  remembered  names  in  fiction  till  Sir  Walter 
Scott's  great  tradition  of  the  romantic  treatment  of  history 
and  humble  life  was  taken  over  by  Cooper,  who  was  its 
earliest  and  last  American  master.  Meanwhile  the  classi- 
cal manner  of  Addison,  both  in  humor  and  all  else,  had 
survived  the  extinction  of  the  manor-line  at  home  by 
transplantation  here  in  Irving  and  his  successors,  whose 
pleasantness  in  letters  has  continued  to  the  days  of  Curtis 
and  Warner.  These  three  strands  of  the  early  pseudo- 
romance,  the  historical  romance,  and  the  Addisonian  light 
essay,  constitute  our  characteristic  borrowings  from  the 
mother-country,  and  they  are  all  in  prose.  In  poetry  there 
was  no  such  appropriation;  Shelley  and  Keats,  Tennyson 
and  Browning,  Swinburne  and  Rossetti,  have  found  no 
continuance  here  in  any  native  work  of  enduring  worth, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  later  prose  authors  of  England. 
On  the  small  scale,  and  among  our  minor  writers,  there 
has  been  imitativeness  in  tone  and  theme;  there  have  been 
little  Dickenses  and  even  little  Mrs.  Hemanses,  the  Mat- 
thewses  and  Sigourneys  of  our  middle  period;  but  in  the 
main  and  on  the  part  of  our  national  writers  the  English 
tradition  has  been  incorporated  in  our  literature  by  a 
broad  academic  culture  from  the  past  rather  than  by 
immediate  and  conscious  imitation  and  transference  in 
the  present  day. 


220  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

Our  colonial  dependence  in  literature,  in  fact,  has  not 
been  so  pre-eminently  English  as  is  commonly  thought. 
It  has  been  far  more  a  European  matter  than  is  ap- 
preciated. Longfellow,  our  first  poet  of  culture,  is  the 
representative  case;  and  his  service  in  making  Continental 
poetry  known  in  this  country  is  too  much  neglected.  To 
others,  as  to  him,  the  past,  whose  charm  won  on  the 
imagination  and  affections,  was  one  of  the  castled  Rhine, 
of  lovely  Italy,  of  romantic  Spain,  of  French  cathedral 
towns,  and  the  picturesqueness  of  Holland,  quite  as  much 
as  of  the  mother-country.  The  German  influence  was 
dominant  in  transcendentalism  at  Boston,  and  the  long 
line  of  Dante  scholars,  from  George  Ticknor  to  Charles 
Norton  at  Harvard,  is  significant  of  a  live  tradition  in 
poetic  outlook  and  taste;  and  the  mention  of  Ticknor, 
with  his  history  of  Spanish  literature,  recalls  the  curious 
closeness  of  Spain  to  our  own  literary  land,  in  the  histories 
of  Prescott  and  Motley,  and  from  Irving  to  Lowell. 
Howells,  too,  has  in  his  earlier  days  borrowed  from  Italy 
for  description  and  literary  history,  and  in  his  later  career 
has  done,  in  some  measure,  for  Continental  contemporary 
fiction  what  Longfellow  did  for  the  treasures  of  verse, 
and  in  our  own  fiction  the  tribute  of  "The  Marble  Faun" 
to  Italy  is  a  supreme  instance  of  international  gratitude. 
It  is  to  be  observed  that  this  connection  with  the  Con- 
tinent, so  natural,  so  continuous,  so  radiant  with  what 
it  gave  to  us,  was  one  through  culture,  either  literary  or 
artistic,  and  not  one  through  action;  it  was  the  past  of 
these  lands,  not  their  present  —  the  antiquity,  learning 
and  sentiment  of  their  past,  not  the  romanticism  of  their 
still  vital  present  —  that  attracted  the  American  interest, 
except  in  the  late  and  single  case  of  Howells  in  fiction; 
and  of  this  culture  and  its  effects  in  art  and  taste,  Long- 


THE   ACHIEVEMENT  221 

fellow,  as  has  been  said,  was  the  clear  star.  Try  as  he 
might  to  be  American  in  theme,  in  "Hiawatha,"  "Evange- 
line," "Miles  Standish,"  and  the  "New  England  Trage- 
dies," and  in  many  shorter  pieces,  his  art  owed  its  simpli- 
city, its  mellowness,  its  adequacy,  its  golden  success,  to 
this  culture  working  out  in  the  new  soil  of  an  American 
nature,  its  refined  charm  in  expression.  This  same  power 
of  culture,  less  perfect  because  more  exclusively  English, 
gave  dignity  to  Lowell's  verse,  and  matter  also  to  his 
prose.  It  was  brain-culture,  through  contact  with  the 
old  books  of  the  world,  and  with  what  then  passed  for 
neoplatonic  and  Oriental  thought,  which  gave  atmos- 
phere to  Emerson's  universe.  Wherever  the  sub- 
ject be  taken  up,  it  will  be  found  that  what  is 
called  our  colonialism  is  very  much  misapprehended  if  it 
be  thought  of  as  an  English  tie  only;  we  have  not  been 
in  the  last  century  intellectually  an  English  colony,  but  we 
have  been  deeply  indebted  for  impulse  and  guidance,  for 
outlook  and  method,  for  a  thousand  subtly  shaping  in- 
fluences, to  all  the  world  beyond  the  seas,  where  both 
thought  and  life  are  old.  It  is  singular  that  our  recog- 
nizable dependence  on  France  seems  so  slight;  it  is, 
perhaps,  only  to  be  seen  in  Henry  James. 

It  would  appear,  then,  that  our  literature  has  been 
sundered  from  the  great  movement  of  romanticism  abroad 
and  its  incarnations  of  democracy,  philanthropy,  and 
science,  its  experiments  and  pilgrimages;  and  that  our 
contact  with  the  Continent  has  been  with  its  past  in 
history,  sentiment,  poetic  form,  critical  canon,  artistic 
impression  and  the  like,  from  which  our  men  of  letters 
derived  culture,  and  a  certain  dignity  and  grace  of  literary 
demeanor,  in  the  scholarly  group  of  which  Irving,  Long- 
fellow, and  Lowell  are  typical  names.    But  if  sundered, 


222  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

the  nation  has  had  a  life  of  its  own,  less  turbulent  and 
perplexed,  less  liable  to  chaotic  and  eccentric  motions, 
less  on  the  grand  scale  of  internal  battle  and  social  up- 
heaval, but  rather  a  life  of  assured  self-command,  in- 
telligent and  slow  change,  conservative  in  its  essence. 

If  one  forgets  Wordsworth,  he  will  become  aware  more 
surely  in  Bryant  of  the  crystalline  horizons,  the  clear-seen 
mountain  lines,  and  the  bald  hill-sides  of  our  rugged  but 
ether-bathed  landscape;  and  will  find  something  of  the 
elemental  in  nature  portrayed  in  his  poems  with  a  severity 
and  grand  simplicity  that  befit  the  new  land  yet  unin- 
habited save  by  the  far-off  water-fowl;  it  is  an  original, 
powerful,  almost  Biblical  note,  fit  to  be  the  first  verse 
of  our  chapter.  Something  of  the  same  simplicity, 
serenity,  ascetic  power,  but  belonging  rather  to  air  than 
earth,  as  if  granite  were  spiritualized  into  light,  there  is 
in  Emerson,  as  elemental  in  the  sphere  of  thought  as 
Byrant  in  that  of  nature;  and  it  is  not  in  the  bleakness  of 
one  or  the  awkwardness  of  the  other  that  the  American 
quality  is  found,  but  in  this  simplicity  which  is  so  absolute 
and  basal  as  almost  to  evade  statement,  and  in  their  vision 
and  thought,  rendered  in  literature,  is  what  Grant  and 
Lincoln  are,  rendered  in  character. 

Emerson  was  intellectually  cultured,  as  was  said  above; 
but  his  power  of  expression  in  poetry  was  lacking  in 
fluidity,  roundness,  and  ease;  his  poetry,  artistically,  is 
Byzantine  in  its  crudity,  like  his  very  figure,  so  stiff,  so 
serious,  so  formal  in  its  formlessness;  but  that  is  the 
accident  of  the  body;  the  insight,  the  imagination,  the 
flash  of  originality  from  within  or  of  beauty  caught  from 
without,  make  the  inwardness  of  the  verse,  and  judged 
by  the  great  qualities  of  the  spirit,  and  especially  by  that 
greatest  one  of  an  absolute  unconscious  simplicity,  Emer- 


THE   ACHIEVEMENT  223 

son's  poetry  pierces  heaven  at  the  highest  altitude  of  all 
our  bards.  His  prose  essays,  liberating  as  they  are  to  the 
mind  and  stimulating  to  the  spiritual  life,  are  on  a  lower 
level;  his  patriotic  sayings,  his  great  American 
lines  —  and  no  poet  has  so  many,  bright  as  the 
lightnings  of  Zeus  —  are  in  his  verse;  but  his 
essays  are  the  flower  of  transcendentalism,  which  stood 
in  American  life  for  religious  revolt  sympathetic  with  the 
movement  of  enlightenment  on  the  Continent,  and  they  are 
the  result  of  that  internal  conflict  consequent  on  a  change 
in  ideals  in  the  spiritual  sphere  which  has  so  often  been 
the  motive  power  of  great  works  in  literature,  but  was 
here  attended  by  none  of  that  dark  stress  which  is  shown 
in  the  Revolutionary  poets  of  all  Europe,  and  even  in  the 
life,  though  not  the  works,  of  Cardinal  Newman. 

The  whole  transcendental  movement,  in  its  literary 
record,  is  a  striking  instance  of  that  absence  of  turbu- 
lence, of  desperate  battle,  and  deep  desire,  in  our  litera- 
ture, which  has  been  emphasized  as  characteristic  in  our 
men  of  letters.  In  Hawthorne  only  is  there  found  the 
sense  of  spiritual  peril,  and  he  presents  it  objectively 
and  historically  as  a  primary  experience  in  the  moral  life 
of  the  founders  of  New  England,  most  significantly  in 
"The  Scarlet  Letter,"  and  again  less  dramatically  and 
more  speculatively  in  "Donatello";  but  in  none  of  his 
work  is  it  a  religious  struggle,  —  it  is  a  moral  catastrophe 
that  he  illuminates.  Hawthorne  is,  for  this  reason,  the 
most  profound  and  vitally  spiritual  in  his  expression  of 
human  experience,  the  deepest  prober  of  the  breast,  of  all 
our  authors,  whether  poets  or  prose-writers;  and  he  comes 
to  this  overmastering  interest  in  sin,  rather  than  crime, 
and  in  the  operations  of  conscience  and  the  recovery  of 
the  soul  through  suffering  and  its  entrance  on  a  greater 


224  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

life  thereby,  because  of  his  American  inheritance  and  en- 
vironment, his  American  genius. 

Bryant  is  a  fading  and  almost  Ossianic  figure,  a  wintry 
ghost,  to  most  of  us;  Emerson  and  Hawthorne, 
a  figure  of  light  and  a  figure  of  darkness,  are 
the  companion  spirits,  American  through  and  through, 
who  now  seem  the  greatest  American  writers  of 
the  last  century.  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  asso- 
ciated together  in  fame  as  in  life,  may  find,  the  one  a 
wider  acceptance,  the  other  an  academic  vogue.  Long- 
fellow's poetry  is  less  valued  now  by  the  critical  class, 
but  it  is  not  likely  that  his  hold  on  the  homes  of  his 
countrymen  has  lessened;  the  critical  class  has  lost  in  the 
sense  of  refinement,  and  is  dull  to  the  quality  of  Long- 
fellow; but  his  trust,  his  humanity,  his  hospitality  to 
the  joys  and  sorrows  of  domestic  life,  his  tenderness,  his 
consolation,  his  noble  nature,  his  just  taste  in  what  to  say 
and  what  to  leave  unsaid  about  the  crises  of  lives,  not 
tragic,  but  touched  with  human  things  that  "have  been 
and  may  be  again,"  his  companionableness  for  souls  not 
over-strenuous,  but  full  of  all  the  pieties  of  life  endearing 
life  —  these  things  give  him  long  lease  of  fame;  and 
within  his  unemphatic  range  he  has  an  unsuspected 
variety,  and  thereby  expresses  without  weariness,  except 
to  the  life-jaded,  an  American  nature  of  such  sweetness, 
refinement,  and  purity  that  it  has  become  almost  ex- 
emplary of  an  ideal  of  the  literary  life  on  this  soil.  Lowell 
has  not  touched  his  people  to  the  same  degree;  he  is  over- 
intellectual  for  some,  and  has  defects  of  taste  which  re- 
pulse others,  and  great  unevenness;  he  remains  our  only 
critic  of  the  first  rank,  but  in  other  respects  his  fame 
seems  a  doubtful  matter.  To  these  names,  with  full  right, 
that  of  Poe  is  added  because  of  his  originality  in  lyric 


I 


THE   ACHIEVEMENT  225 

tone  and  motive,  and  its  power,  now  long  demonstrated, 
in  this  country  and  abroad;  and  also  because  of  the  pe- 
culiar horror  of  his  tales. 

No  other  name  would  be  suggested  as  of  the  first  rank 
in  our  literature,  and  therefore  worthy  to  be  mentioned  in 
a  century's  achievement;  or  if  suggested,  none  would  pass 
unchallenged. 

The  works  of  standard  authors,  accepted  by  a  nation, 
constitute  its  true  achievement  in  literature;  but  in  so 
strict  a  definition  the  bulk  of  writing  in  any  age  is  lost 
sight  of,  and  the  sense  of  real  performance  is  less  than  it 
should  be.  There  have  been  hundreds  of  American 
writers,  and  scores  of  them  have  been  successful  novelists, 
nature- writers,  humorists,  dramatists,  poets;  and  in  a 
more  minute  view  they  would  be  seen  to  have  contributed 
much  that  would  deserve  recognition  in  a  fuller  statement. 
The  novelists  after  Cooper  have  given  expression  to  many 
provincial  or  metropolitan  phases  of  American  life,  that 
serve  as  local  transcripts  of  manners  and  places  and  stud- 
ies of  some  careers,  and  these  may  prove  historically  in- 
teresting; the  humorists  have  caught  a  distinct  flavor  from 
the  time,  and  Mark  Twain  is  theircaptital  type  of  popular 
celebrity;  and  soTthe  oFher  classes,  the  describers  of  na- 
ture, of  whom  Thoreau  is  the  leader,  the  sentimentalists 
of  whom  Mitchell  is  the  most  enduring,  and  the  others, 
each  with  its  head,  have  accomplished  success  in  their 
day  and  generation. 

In  the  fields  of  endeavor  that  neighbor  literature,  in 
history,  oratory,  state  papers,  and  the  like,  distinction  has 
been  won  as  high  in  those  provinces  of  expression  as  any 
in  the  pure  literary  art.  But  to  examine  our  literature 
in  this  comprehensive  way  in  order  to  exhibit  our  true 
performance  would  be  as  vain  a  task  as  to  endeavor  to 


226  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

show  our  inventive  genius  by  a  catalogue  of  the  patent- 
office  instead  of  by  those  supreme  examples  which  have 
been  gifts  to  all  the  world.  The  national  life,  it  is  true, 
has  found  expression  in  many  authors  besides  those  of 
genius,  and  in  many  men  of  literary  faculty  approaching 
genius  —  its  moral  experience  in  Whittier,  its  democratic 
crudity  in  Whitman,  its  later  culture  in  the  latter  day 
poets,  its  abolished  Southern  civilization  in  "Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin,"  its  border  and  mining-camp  romance  in 
Bret  Harte;  but  the  writers  in  these  cases  belong  in  a 
secondary"  class  in  comparison  with  Bryant,  Irving, 
Cooper,  Emerson,  Hawthorne,  Longfellow,  Lowell,  and 
Poe.  These  last  are  the  authors  whom  the  nation  as 
a  whole  regards  as  its  great  writers  in  pure 
literature,  and  none  besides.  They  are  themselves 
in  a  second  class  in  comparison  with  the  English 
or  French  authors  of  the  century;  and,  in  fact, 
they  fall,  in  almost  a  solid  group,  just  below  the 
greatest  names  in  English  literature,  and  above  all  others 
who  are  reckoned  as  second  in  England,  and  Emerson, 
Hawthorne,  and  Poe  are  unique  each  in  his  kind.  The 
work  they  and  those  associated  with  them  have  done  has 
been  distinguished  by  artistic  conscientiousness,  to  a  de- 
gree rarely  paralleled,  and  also  by  purity;  no  nation  has 
so  pure,  few  so  painstaking,  a  literature;  it  fails  of  the 
highest  rank  only  because  it  lacks  inspiration,  passion, 
that  deep  stirring  of  the  spirit  of  man  which,  with  all  its 
cost,  is  the  cause  of  his  highest  reach  in  imagination,  in- 
tellect, and  desire. 


CHAPTER  VII 

RESULTS    AND    CONDITIONS 

In  the  survey  of  our  literature  from  the  point  of  view 
of  its  relations  to  the  country  at  large,  it  is  impossible  to 
escape  a  sense  of  fragmentariness  in  the  products,  of  dis- 
proportion between  the  literary  energy  and  the  other  vital 
powers  of  the  people,  and  of  the  inadequacy  of  literature 
as  a  function  of  national  expression.  Its  geographical 
distribution  is  uneven,  and  reflects  the  movement  of  popu- 
lation; its  seat  has  been  mainly  in  the  Northeast:  in 
power  of  interpretation  of  social  life  it  had  depth  in  New 
England  only,  and  as  it  spread  southward  and  westward 
it  grew  in  superficiality.  Humor  hence  alone  is  native  to 
the  whole  country:  and  hence,  perhaps,  Mark  Twain,  in 
that  sphere,  most  nearly  approaches  the  position  of  a 
national  writer,  though  he  is  characteristically  Western 
in  his  origins  and  his  mind,  as  Holmes,  much  more  nar- 
rowly, belongs  to  the  extreme  East,  and  is  there  the 
member  of  a  provincial  caste.  But  there  has  been  no 
national  author  in  the  universal  sense;  no  man  molded 
so  American  in  genius  as  to  appeal  to  all  parts  equally, 
and  to  express  the  common  nature  either  by  an  intense 
spiritual  concentration  or  by  diverse  representation.  Our 
literature  is  rightly  described  as  a  sectional  product,  in 
a  stage  lying  beyond  its  original  colonial  condition,  it  is 
true,  but  not  advanced  to  national  unity;  and  here  again 
it  reflects  the  fact  that  our  political  union  preceded  that 
community  of  mental  and  moral  culture,  of  ideas,  beliefs, 
purposes,  of  deep  decisions  and  fundamental  agreements, 

227 


228  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

which  is  still,  in  relation  to  the  whole  country,  partial 
and  approximate  only. 

The  clefts  in  the  nation  are  intellectual  and  moral,  but 
they  exist;  and  our  literature,  in  its  history,  discloses 
their  direction  and  depth.  Its  absorption  by  the  people 
still  has  geographical  and  racial  limitations,  not  to  be  over- 
come in  our  day  by  this  elder  group  of  writers.  In 
America  the  literary  historian  has  to  deal  with  a  trans- 
planted civilization  which  originally  allowed  widely  vary- 
ing degrees  of  culture  both  in  the  different  ranks  of 
society  and  territorially;  the  extent  of  the  country,  in  con- 
nection with  other  causes,  enabled  these  initial  diversities 
between  South  and  North,  border  and  sea-coast,  to  resist 
unification  in  such  general  and  prevailing  homogeneity 
as  really  subsisted  in  all.  Under  these  conditions  it  was 
inevitable  that  our  literature  should  be  produced  in  local 
centers,  and  make  an  imperfect  appeal  in  its  own  day, 
and  be  taken  into  the  common  consciousness  with  incom- 
plete and  uneven  success  by  the  nation  in  its  length  and 
breadth.  It  is,  indeed,  rather  by  this  formative  influence 
in  entering  into  national  life,  in  the  process  of  time,  than 
by  its  origin  out  of  such  a  life  that  our  literature  becomes 
broadly  indigenous;  but  it  is  hardly  to  be  thought  that 
the  exponents  of  old  New  England  or  of  the  new  West  ^» 
especially  in  view  of  the  great  and  continuing  historic 
rift  in  principle,  sentiment,  and  memory  which  separates 
the  South  from  a  free  participation  in  our  moral  and 
imaginative  life  —  will  become  national  even  with  the 
lapse  of  years.  Our  first  authors  represent  an  historic 
moment  of  great  interest,  a  new  literary  beginning;  they 
express  the  mutually  excluding  social  spheres  in  which 
they  were  bred,  and  taken  together  they  include  all  native 
imaginative  life  that  was  to  find  permanent  embodiment. 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  229 

It  belonged  to  the  environment  that,  in  so  far  as  they  were 
American,  they  should  be  sectional. 

It  was  also  inherent  in  the  conditions  that  the  literary 
continuers  of  a  transplanted  civilization  should  hark  back 
to  the  times  and  lands  of  its  origins  and  home.  The  tie 
of  paternity  is  stronger  than  the  fraternal  bond,  and 
nearer  of  kin;  and  the  minds  of  our  writers  were  more  at 
ease  in  conversing  with  their  intellectual  ancestors  than 
with  their  fellow-citizens.  It  was  a  fortunate  incident 
of  our  separation  from  the  mother-country  that  our  men 
of  letters  naturally  went  not  only  to  the  English  tradition 
but  to  Continental  literatures  with  more  freedom  and 
directness;  had  Longfellow  and  Emerson  been  born  in 
England  it  is  unlikely  that  the  one  would  have  stamped 
his  art  so  broadly  with  the  Continent  or  the  other  have  so 
Orientalized  the  surface  of  his  thought.  Intimate  as  was 
the  English  inheritance,  it  is,  nevertheless,  true  that  the 
conscious  impact  of  the  past  on  our  literary  men  was 
largely  through  immediate  contact  with  the  other  litera- 
tures of  Europe  as  they  had  been  molded  by  the  Renais- 
sance, the  Gothic  revival,  and  the  Romantic  revolt;  our 
direct  obligation  to  Greek  and  Latin  was  slight  and  is 
negligible;  but  we  touched  the  broad  stream  of  Occidental 
culture,  in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  not  through 
England  only  but  from  the  Baltic  to  Lisbon  and  Shiraz. 

This  ancient  and  rich  literary  past  was  the  source  of 
our  artistic  tradition,  and  the  sense  of  its  dignity  and  pre- 
ciousness  was  always  great  in  the  scholars  among  our 
writers,  and  nearly  all  of  them  were  scholarly  men.  They 
lived  habitually  in  it,  they  learned  from  it,  they  emulated 
its  works.  In  other  words,  they  had  the  academic  mind. 
They  were  but  partly  naturalized  even  in  the  country  in 
which  they  were  born;  they  were  sharers  in  the  cosmo- 


230  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

politanism  of  the  modern  world,  and  it  was  forced  on  them 
by  the  state  of  American  culture.  They  were  citizens  of 
a  wide  world  of  letters;  even  in  their  patriotic  endeavors 
they  owned  and  obeyed  another  allegiance  to  truth  and 
art,  to  the  republic  of  letters,  to  the  universal  human 
spirit;  and  this  was  their  natural  lot  because  they  were 
compelled  to  seek  their  literary  inheritance  in  an  age 
before  American  letters  began  to  be.  This  was,  for  them, 
to  take  the  academic  point  of  view;  and  whether  they 
did  this  from  choice  or  under  the  compulsion  of  circum- 
stances, the  limitation  thus  imposed  on  them  is  often 
thought  of  as  disqualifying  their  Americanism.  In  so  far 
as  they  continued  the  literary  tradition  in  its  original 
shape,  as  if  it  had  never  been  transplanted,  it  is  said  that 
they  were  not  of  the  pure,  native  soil. 

The  academic  point  of  view  is  nothing  more  than  an 
ever-present  sense  of  the  hand  of  the  past  in  literature 
—  that  hand  which,  through  the  whole  range  of  the  vital 
energies  of  society,  is  felt,  perhaps,  at  first  as  compelling 
and  restrictive,  but  at  last  as  salutary  and  saving,  for  it 
is  the  racial  will,  abiding  from  the  past  in  us,  which  has 
formed  not  only  our  bodies  in  stature  and  favor,  but  the 
habits  of  the  soul  in  action.  The  literary  power  of  tradi- 
tion is  inherited,  half  in  our  instincts  and  early  affec- 
tions, and  half  in  our  books  of  counsel  and  example;  the 
academic  mind  is  one  that  masters  this  tradition  and  is 
mastered  by  it,  and  has  thus  become  a  race-mind  with 
different  degrees  of  fullness  and  faculty.  To  know  the 
past  of  artistic  power,  to  be  imbued  with  its  moods  and 
instructed  with  its  great  works  in  the  human  spirit,  and 
to  bring  from  them  the  true  perspective  that  must  be 
applied  to  the  recent  and  rising  world  of  letters,  is  the 
highway  of  criticism;  so  it  has  been  built  from  the  first. 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  231 

Our  authors  in  submitting  themselves  to  this  education  in 
the  literature  of  that  civilization  of  which  America  is  but 
a  forward  branch,  neither  injured  their  genius  nor  lessened 
their  power.  They  were  on  the  road  that  great  poets  have 
always  followed.  Who  can  think  they  would  have  been 
happier  had  they  chosen  to  forget  Uhland  and  Dante, 
Hafiz  and  Plotinus,  Scott  and  Pope  and  Keats,  and  re- 
member only  the  ^'Bay  Psalm-Book,"  Edwards  and 
Franklin,  Freneau  and  Brown;  or  literature  apart,  to  look 
only  on  the  lilacs  in  the  door-yard,  and  the  wood-chopper, 
the  fisherman  and  the  itinerant  Yankee,  or  what  of  nobler 
form  —  Monadnock,  Washington  or  Decatur,  Massasoit 
or  Pontiac  —  there  might  be?  They  did  not  slight  the 
American  material  in  their  age;  rather  they  clung  to  it 
with  unhappy  tenacity;  but  their  power  to  deal  with  it 
—  and  this  is  a  more  important  because  more  compre- 
hensive debt  than  any  obligation  for  theme  or  atmos- 
phere—  they  obtained  from  the  education  in  the  old 
humanities.  Art  is  not  self-made;  its  breeding  is  from 
far-off  ages  now;  it  is,  in  literature,  one  of  the  oldest  pos- 
sessions of  the  race;  and  the  poet  who  thinks  to  sing,  as 
the  linnet  sings,  by  the  mere  chipping  of  its  egg,  will  have 
a  linnet's  fame.  In  taking  possession  of  all  the  literature 
of  their  civilization  that  they  could  get,  our  early  authors, 
so  far  from  finding  a  limitation,  found  an  enfranchise- 
ment. It  is  true,  no  doubt,  that  in  this  they  passed  beyond 
the  native  culture  of  their  own  country;  they  departed 
from  what  was  common  to  the  State;  and,  in  so  far,  they 
were  not  Americans  in  the  provincial  sense. 

They  derived  from  their  academic  education  the  artis- 
tic point  of  view.  This  characterized  them  and  differen- 
tiated them  from  their  countrymen  engaged  in  quite  other 
occupations.    The  rawness  of  American  life  on  the  broad 


232  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

scale,  the  vulgarity  of  its  surface  of  manners  and  the 
fierceness  of  its  money-getting  exploitation  of  the  country 

—  greater  probably  than  ever  afflicted  so  large  a  territory 

—  survive  perceptibly  only  in  our  books  of  humor,  but 
they  were  very  real.  When  the  most  liberal  allowance 
has  been  made  for  caricature  and  prejudice  and  a  bad  tem- 
per, the  observations  of  Mrs.  Trollope  and  Dickens,  and 
even  the  coarse  diatribe  of  Moore,  are  blabbing  tales. 
The  Hardcider  Campaign  is  a  landmark  for  the  first 
irruption  of  Western  roughness,  like  a  back-water  wash, 
upon  the  more  staid  and  respectable  communities  of  the 
East,  where,  perhaps,  is  then  to  be  found  the  ending  of 
old  colonial  reverential  ways.  But  without  drawing  into 
memory  again  the  things  in  which  national  oblivion  de- 
lights, it  is  plain  to  any  student  of  our  social  history  that 
these  men  of  letters  lived  very  much  protected  lives,  in 
little  circles  of  their  own,  apart  from  the  mass  of  their 
fellow-citizens.  They  were,  as  a  whole,  gentle-born  and 
college-bred;  they  were  the  late  fruition  of  a  slowly 
matured  refinement  in  their  separate  communities;  and 
life  in  them  had  come  to  that  perfection  where  the 
artistic  point  of  view  —  the  desire  for  moral  order,  sen- 
suous beauty,  and  emotional  harmony  —  was  natural, 
and  the  will  to  find  these  things,  to  create  them,  effectual. 
The  local  circles  in  which  they  dwelt,  and  of  whose  mem- 
bers they  were  representative,  were  a  small  portion  of  the 
thriving  and  driving  American  world. 

Artists  in  their  work,  however,  they  were  determined 
to  be.  They  were  very  conscious  of  this  purpose,  and 
they  exhibit  something  that  may  be  called  the  timidity 
of  the  scholar,  a  feeling  of  the  presence  of  the  model  and 
of  the  eye  of  the  master.  This  was  the  weak  point  in 
their  academic  dependence,  and  accounts  for  the  plenti- 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  233 

ful  vein  of  imitativeness  that  belongs  to  all  young  litera- 
tures in  their  learning  times.  Some  of  them  never  really- 
laid  aside  this  touch  of  inferiority,  however  unreal  it  was 
in  fact.  In  Lowell,  who,  perhaps  more  than  any  other, 
was  so  abundant  in  faculty  and  power  that  he  makes  the 
impression  of  a  man  unequal  to  his  own  genius,  there  is 
felt  constantly  the  neighborhood  of  a  stylist;  in  his  odes, 
for  example,  it  is  the  greater  neighborhood  of  Dryden; 
in  the  later  lyrics  it  is  the  smaller  neighborhood  of  Dob- 
son;  "The  Biglow  Papers,'^  on  the  other  hand,  is  the 
notable  instance  of  intrinsic  originaHty,  certainty, 
mastery;  yet  even  there  he  could  not  get  along  without 
his  prefaces.  Cooper  is  the  pupil  of  Scott,  Irving  of  the 
essayists,  and  even  Emerson  is  not  without  the  echo  of 
seventeenth-century  short-rhymed  verse,  a  hard,  ringing 
coinage  not  easily  deceiving  the  ear.  Longfellow  acquired 
foreign  poetic  manners,  but  he  was  native  to  their  graces 
and  wore  them  as  his  own  rather  than  by  adoption;  he 
Americanized  all  that  he  brought  home  either  from  travel 
or  fireside  study.  Poe,  who  drew  his  talent  to  the  dregs, 
displayed  in  his  art  that  cold  calculation  which  was  also 
an  element  in  his  life.  Hawthorne,  the  purest  artist  of  all, 
was  least  a  pupil  and  soonest  a  master.  All,  in  their  differ- 
ent ways  and  degrees,  worked  out  an  artistic  method  by 
which  they  meant  to  represent,  to  interpret,  and  to  un- 
veil the  human  spirit.  They  were  concerned  not  with  the 
apparent,  but  the  real;  not  with  the  transitory,  but  the 
eternal;  and,  excepting  Poe,  they  were  all  artists  of  the 
beautiful. 

They  also  adopted,  in  common,  to  make  a  third  defi- 
nition, the  romantic  point  of  view;  and  if  by  their  cul- 
tivation of  refined  beauty  they  were  set  apart  from  the 
mass  of  their  countrymen,  it  might  be  thought  that  they 


234  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

intensified  this  remoteness  by  departing  as  far  from  Amer- 
ican actuality  as  the  spirit  of  romance  could  convey  them. 
They  obeyed  the  compulsion  of  the  time.  Romanticism 
ruled  the  literary  world  abroad.  Travel  of  itself  is  al- 
ways a  main  source  of  romance.  It  is  the  realist  who  must 
have  a  home-keeping  mind,  in  order  to  obtain  that 
familarity  with  the  life  he  depicts  which  is  required  for 
truthfulness.  The  romancer  is  free  of  all  the  world;  if 
he  bides  in  his  native  village,  like  Thoreau,  he  finds  Italy, 
Egypt,  Siberia  there;  if  he  strays  through  the  broad  world, 
the  marvel  of  nature,  the  ruin  of  history,  the  passion  of 
life  are  his  discoveries.  Irving  in  the  Alhambra,  Long- 
fellow by  the  belfry  of  Bruges,  Taylor  in  the  footways  of 
Palestine  are  characteristic  figures;  to  their  instincts, 
their  native  deficiencies,  their  outgoing  spirits,  Europe, 
visible  in  history,  was  as  much  a  realm  of  romance  as  the 
forest  of  Brocelliand  to  medieval  knighthood;  when  they 
returned  home  they  found  romance  sitting  by  the  shores 
of  the  New  World. 

America  was  romantic  from  the  first.  I  presume  it  is 
with  others  as  with  myself;  classical  beauty  leaves  me 
contemplative;  romantic  beauty  incites  me.  The  spirit  of 
life  in  America  is  an  incited  spirit.  In  Hawthorne's  Ameri- 
can themes  the  encircling  wilderness  of  Puritanism,  the 
life  of  the  decaying  generation,  the  aspiration  of  the  re- 
formers, were  romantic;  so  were  the  forest  of  Cooper's 
"Pathfinder,"  the  Hiawatha  year,  and  the  idealizations  of 
his  country  that  Lowell  shaped  in  the  "Washers  of  the 
Shroud"  and  elsewhere.  In  atmosphere,  faith,  and  passion 
alike,  romance  has  been  our  genius;  it  continued  so  in 
Bret  Harte's  picturesqueness  and  Joaquin  Miller's 
arid  sublimity.  The  romantic  spirit  in  our  authors 
was    fed,    too,    not    only    from    contemporary    litera- 


RESULTS   AND   CONDITIONS  235 

ture  —  the  European  wave  of  the  time  —  but  from 
its  fountain-heads.  These  men  went  to  the  great 
works  of  the  race.  They  translated  Homer,  Dante, 
and  Faust;  Longfellow  gathered  the  spoils  of  the  saga  and 
ballad,  and  Lowell  grew  familiar  with  trouvere  and  trou- 
badour. In  the  most  vivid  autobiographical  word  he  ever 
wrote,  he  said  of  this  experience: 

"I  was  the  first  who  ever  burst 
Into  that  silent  sea." 

Emerson  appropriated,  as  best  he  could,  Persian  image 
and  atmosphere  through  Von  Hammer.  History  S)mi- 
pathized  with  them  in  Prescott  and  Motley.  To  these 
must  be  added  the  infusion  of  German  philosophy  in  the 
transcendentalists,  with  Hedge  as  their  center  of  learning, 
not  without  satellites,  and  the  re-birth  of  old  English 
and  the  ballads  which  Child  accomplished.  It  is  simple 
truth  to  say  that  the  literatures  of  the  world  were  never 
better  known,  more  intelligently,  more  variously,  more 
richly,  than  in  Cambridge  at  that  time.  But  if  our 
authors,  by  their  foreign  contact  and  artistic  sense,  de- 
parted from  the  body  of  the  people,  on  this  side  of  ro- 
mantic prepossession  they  found  reunion  with  the  na- 
tional spirit;  the  planting  of  the  colonies,  the  Revolution, 
and  the  war  for  the  Union  were  romantic  causes;  the 
freeing  of  the  negroes  and  the  experiments  of  socialistic 
reorganization,  that  everywhere  in  one  or  another  form 
dotted  the  land,  were  romantic  dreams.  If  there  was  any 
solvent  that  could  have  fused  these  men  with  their 
country,  it  was  romantic  art;  here  they  were  at  one  with 
the  people,  as  in  their  culture  and  their  artistic  ripening 
they  were  in  advance  of  the  common  life. 

Such  are  some  of  the  causes  of  the  lack  of  cor- 


236  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

respondence  between  our  earlier  literature  and  American 
life,  in  its  sectional  and  foreign  aspects  and  in  its  artistic 
quality.  The  aloofness  that  their  work  takes  on,  when 
viewed  in  relation  to  the  whole  country,  either  in  its  own 
period  or  now,  is  very  tangibly  felt,  and  it  increases  in 
proportion  as  the  work  rises  in  the  scale  of  art,  thought, 
and  culture,  in  Poe,  Hawthorne,  Emerson,  Lowell,  Irving. 
In  the  case  of  these  men  the  habitancy  of  their  minds 
was  in  the  past  of  literature,  the  abstract  moral  or  esthetic 
sphere,  the  glamour  of  foreign  horizons;  they  knew 
America  as  a  part,  but  not  the  whole,  of  life;  they  were 
all  sons  of  an  older  civilization,  keenly  conscious  of  an 
earlier  home,  and  even  in  their  late  age  still  planters  of 
the  mind  in  a  new  world.  In  consequence  of  this,  they 
appealed  broadly,  at  best,  to  but  one  strain  of  the 
founding  blood. 

It  is  not  surprising,  under  such  circumstances,  that 
they  should  rapidly  grow  old-fashioned.  They  are,  in 
fact,  farther  off  from  our  growing  youth  than  would 
readily  be  conceived;  they  are  less  near  than  their  English 
contemporaries,  for  example.  The  tradition  which  they 
accepted  and  emulated  was  necessarily  in  them  a  second- 
hand affair,  and  not  only  were  they,  to  this  extent,  belated 
Goldsmiths,  Scotts,  Keatses,  Drydens,  and  Dantes,  but 
their  Americanism  itself,  in  so  far  as  they  consciously 
sought  it  in  topic,  was  a  matter  of  the  now  remote  past, 
of  the  colonies,  the  Indians,  the  border,  of  things  and 
conditions  whose  picture  and  sentiment  are  now  historical; 
and,  in  the  graver  and  the  esthetic  sphere,  the  transcen- 
dentalism of  Emerson,  the  sentimentality  of  Poe,  the 
balladry  of  Longfellow  —  who  lived  in  the  age  of  Uhland 
—  the  classicism  of  Lowell,  the  rusticity  of  Whittier,  the 
boarding-house  of  the  Autocrat,  are  far-off  things.    The 


RESULTS  AND   CONDITIONS  237 

speed  with  which  these  authors,  in  the  mass  of  their  work, 
retire  into  quiescence  while  their  acceptance  becomes  con- 
ventional, is  not  an  illusion;  the  change  goes  on  apace. 
Their  reputations  gained  enormously  by  the  fewness  of 
the  band.  If  one  swallow  does  not  make  a  summer,  yet 
he  is  listened  to  more  than  many  swallows.  If  these  au- 
thors were  not  our  own,  and  if  they  were  not,  furthermore, 
all  our  own,  would  there  be  so  many  books  written  about 
them,  I  wonder?  To  me  they  still  seem  a  troop  of  pil- 
grims, taking  up  their  singing  march  in  our  springtide  and 
morntide,  but  much  apart  in  their  May-making,  psalm- 
singing,  and  story- telling;  they  recede  more  and  more 
from  life.  There  is  something  pathetic  in  their  artistic 
loneliness  in  their  own  time,  something  more  pathetic  in 
their  fading  away  in  ours;  for  their  age  is  gone,  as  truly 
as  Saadi's  and  Walter  von  der  Vogelweid's. 

The  absorption  of  our  literature  by  the  people,  never- 
theless, has  been  remarkable,  in  proportion  to  its  intrinsic 
worth.  Epic  and  drama,  the  two  greatest  literary  forms, 
have  been  absent  from  it;  so,  too,  has  love-passion,  while 
satire  and  elegy  have  been  slightly  represented.  In  prose, 
the  range  of  character  has  been  narrow,  the  element  of 
plot  inconspicuous,  and  the  most  consistent  and  varied 
success  has  been  achieved  in  the  short  story,  sketch,  and 
tale.  The  themes  have  been  domestic  life,  religious  feel- 
ing, public  causes  —  in  which  are  to  be  included  all  pieces 
of  a  patriotic  motive  —  and  that  phase  of  history  which 
may  be  described  as  the  legend  of  our  origin  in  all  parts 
of  the  country.  The  nearness  of  these  topics  to  the  people 
governs  its  appropriation  of  the  work,  in  varying  degrees; 
and  the  simple  spontaneous  direct  style  of  the  writing, 
which  is  also  the  people's  style,  is  a  controlling  factor  in 
getting  acceptance  for  the  work.    In  the  style  is  to  be 


238  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

found  the  most  characteristic  national  trait;  the  themes 
of  the  affections  and  of  religion  belong  to  universal  human 
life;  local  color,  historic  substance,  and  the  passion  of 
loyalty  to  our  ideas  and  institutions  are  national  elements. 

Our  literature,  so  absorbed,  has  been  effectual  within 
the  natural  limits  of  its  appeal.  Its  path  in  the  land  has 
been  identical  with  the  path  of  the  power  of  civilization 
and  the  mastering  national  force;  it  has  been  less  ac- 
cepted in  the  South,  which  is  antipathetic  to  the  national 
spirit  and  genius,  and  it  is  less  readily  received  by  the 
foreign  elements  in  the  population,  though  large  portions 
of  these  have  been  prepared  for  sympathy  and  under- 
standing in  regard  to  it  by  being  imbued  with  Revolution- 
ary hope.  In  spite  of  all  deductions,  it  has  done  its  work 
as  a  leaven  and  power  in  the  nation,  and  will  long  continue 
to  operate  in  a  diminishing  degree.  The  extent  to  which 
Emerson,  for  example,  who  was  the  most  purely  American 
of  all,  has  entered  into  national  life  by  sustaining  inde- 
pendence, self-reliance,  and  perfect  courage  in  freedom  of 
opinion,  which  most  constitute  the  American  way  of  be- 
havior, is  incalculable,  while,  at  the  same  time,  he  has 
nourished  ideality  of  aim  and  the  conviction  of  a  divine 
meaning  in  the  world  which  are  also  broadly  character- 
istic of  the  free  American  temper.  The  power  of  our 
literature  falls  within  the  limits  of  the  idea  of  democracy, 
but  that  idea  it  has  companioned  through  the  century; 
it  has  remained  close  to  the  common  life,  the  common 
religion,  the  fortunes  of  the  common  people  in  the  State, 
and  has  thrown  over  the  State  historical  romance  and 
inspirited  it  with  ideal  purpose  for  humane  ends.  Our 
past  is  contained  in  it. 

In  the  historical  field,  where  the  American  material  and 
color  of  our  romance  are  most  plain,  the  past,  of  necessity, 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  239 

either  perishes  or  is  preserved  for  the  people  in  the  forms 
of  imagination  furnished  by  its  writers,  and  these  forms 
as  now  fixed  are  not  likely  to  be  changed  or  much  modified 
by  later  authors  who  may  recur  to  the  subject.  Colonial, 
Indian,  and  the  border  life  have  become  largely  literary, 
and  are  seen  through  literature,  rather  than  actual,  seen 
through  history;  the  record,  it  is  true,  is  accessible  to  the 
scholar,  but  for  the  people  imagination  serves,  as  it  is  in 
Hiawatha,  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  Leatherstocking,  and 
Roaring  Camp.  The  Dutchman,  the  Puritan,  and  the 
pioneer  have  found  imperfect  types,  an  incomplete,  and 
largely  legendary  interpretation,  but  such  it  is. 

In  the  ethical  field  a  similar  prominence  belongs  to 
those  ideas  of  democracy  which  have  been  most  influential 
in  working  out  the  political  and  moral  faith  of  the  nation 
and  which  appear  in  the  poetry  of  Lowell,  Emerson,  and 
Whittier  especially.  If  the  nation  be  regarded  in  its 
diversity  and  extent,  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the 
welcome  given  to  these  ideas,  great  as  it  is,  has  been  so 
widespread  as  to  entitle  it  to  be  called  national ;  but  if  the 
nation  be  regarded  in  its  unity  and  core  of  life,  and  in 
its  historic  efficiency,  a  different  answer  may  be  given, 
for  this  welcome  has  come  from  the  ruling  and  dominant 
class,  from  that  part  of  the  people  which  has  led  in  making 
history  and  spreading  institutions  on  those  same  principles 
which  gave  the  nation  birth.  It  seems  unlikely  that  this 
intense  and  elevated  strain,  which  belongs  character- 
istically to  New  England  poets,  appeals  in  the  way  litera- 
ture ought  to  appeal  —  that  is,  sympathetically  and  spon- 
taneously —  to  many  Americans  not  of  the  original  stock 
of  the  North,  except  the  English  emigrants  of  this  century, 
and  their  children,  who  were  of  a  similar  breed.  The 
number  of  such  descendants  of  the  first  colonists  is  many 


240  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

millions,  and  they  belt  the  North  across  the  Continent; 
but  they  are  only  a  portion  of  the  whole  people.  Cer- 
tainly the  readers,  who  find  their  own  unconscious  being 
expressed  in  the  ideas  of  these  poets,  are  fewer  than  those 
who  absorb  without  difficulty  the  literary  interpretation 
of  our  history. 

In  connection  with  this,  it  is  necessary  to  take  account 
of  the  vast  accretions  of  our  population  from  foreign  lands, 
of  a  different  ancestry  and  language  from  the  race  which 
founded  the  nation  and  established  the  genius  of  the  Eng- 
lish language  and  of  English  institutions  as  the  original 
spring  and  the  necessary  fountain  of  its  continuing  life, 
at  least  for  our  own  ages.  Citizens  of  German  extraction, 
for  example,  depend,  even  in  the  second  generation  to 
some  degree,  upon  their  own  native  books,  on  Goethe  and 
Schiller,  and  their  many  minor  compatriots,  for  the  senti- 
ment and  ideas  that  flow  from  literature.  Such  books 
have  no  life  in  the  soil  except  to  supply  the  mold  of 
the  spirit  for  those  who  have  not  been  made 
completely  English  in  language  and  American  in  tempera- 
ment; no  foreign  book  of  literary  rank  has  been  produced 
here  from  such  sources.  Whether  the  assimilation  of 
American  ideas  goes  on  in  the  younger  generations  with 
anything  like  the  same  certainty  and  penetration  as  the 
appropriation  of  American  history  and  institutional  life, 
may  well  be  considered  a  doubtful  matter.    The  truth  is 

—  and  here  is  one  reason  for  the  apparent  disproportion 
between  our  literary  energy  and  our  other  vital  powers 

—  that  the  function  of  literature  is  only  partly  discharged 
by  our  native  writers.  The  situation  is  not  unlike  that 
spoken  of  as  existing  in  the  Puritan  colony,  where  the 
Bible  took  the  place  of  all  other  literature  as  an  instru- 
ment of  self-expression  for  the  soul  that  used  it  in  both 


RESULTS   AND   CONDITIONS  241 

the  intellectual  and  the  emotional  or  moral  life.  Not  only 
have  our  foreign  strains  a  special  literature,  adapted  to 
their  habits  and  temperaments,  and  also  dear  to  their 
affections,  which  lingers  on,  but  the  great  English-sprung 
mass  of  the  people  have  the  literature  of  England,  which 
makes  a  racial  appeal  to  them,  and  is  of  permanent  in- 
terest. Dickens  and  Thackeray,  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, to  speak  of  the  last  age,  and  Scott,  Wordsworth,  and 
Burns  in  the  preceding  time,  not  to  mention  such  peren- 
nial powers  as  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  discharge  the 
function  of  literature  for  us  far  more  effectually,  with 
greater  vividness  and  diversity  than  our  own  writers  can 
accomplish.  What  the  Bible  was  to  the  Puritans  —  the 
Book  of  Life  —  that  English  literature  is  to  us  still;  and 
to  it  all  American  writing  is  essentially  supplementary. 
The  place  of  literature  in  our  national  life,  as  a  great 
function  of  expression,  is  not  measured  either  by  our  own 
production  or  our  appreciation  of  it;  but  spreads  deeply 
and  diversely  in  the  uses  made  of  the  historic  literatures 
of  the  world,  primary  among  which  for  us  are  the  Hebrew 
and  the  English. 

The  absorption  of  our  literature  by  nations  abroad  also 
offers  some  indications  of  its  native  characteristics. 
France,  from  which  we  have  received  least  in  formative 
power,  has  derived  most  from  us.  Cooper  fell  in  with  the 
taste  for  romantic  naturalism  there  in  his  day,  and  Poe 
appealed  to  something  racial  in  the  Gallic  spirit  by  virtue 
of  which  he  found  not  only  acceptance,  but  imitation; 
Hawthorne  also,  though  to  a  far  less  degree,  was  made 
welcome.  In  Germany  there  was  much  the  same  fortune 
for  Cooper  —  there  seems  to  be  a  special  affinity  in  the 
German  race  for  the  forest  —  and  their  own  romantic 
schools  had  prepared  the  way  for  Poe  and  Hawthorne, 


242  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

while  they  added  Longfellow  to  the  favored  number.  The 
countries  to  the  north  and  south  show  no  special  trait  in 
their  receptivity,  and  in  general  our  authors  entered  the 
Continent,  as  they  did  England,  through  their  power  in 
the  universal  human  spirit  rather  than  by  local  qualities 
in  their  work. 

In  England,  nevertheless,  these  last  counted  in  a  pe- 
culiar way;  it  was  natural  that  our  authors  should  desire 
to  appear  to  the  manner  born  and  without  provincial 
traits;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  was  also  natural  that 
Englishmen  should  desire  to  see  in  their  trans-Atlantic 
kin  something,  whatever  it  might  be,  that  constituted 
native  and  peculiar  character.  Our  authors  sought  to  con- 
form to  the  common  type  of  English  genius;  Englishmen, 
on  the  contrary,  sought  the  variation.  English  judgment 
frequently  persisted  in  identifying  the  American  genius  by 
its  exceptional  instances;  and  in  Bret  Harte  and  Joaquin 
Miller,  and  especially  in  Mark  Twain  and  the  humorists 
generally,  and  in  Walt  Whitman  among  our  poets,  was 
found  the  new  American  type.  It  was  felt  that  our  polite 
literature,  as  it  appeared  in  those  half-dozen  names  which 
have  shimmered  all  along  these  pages  like  a  little  string 
of  pearls,  told  over  and  over,  was  not  characteristic  but 
a  continuation  of  the  old  tradition,  an  English  literature 
transplanted  to  a  new  soil,  and  there  thriving  in  so 
ancestral  a  way  as  scarcely  to  show  the  change;  rather  in 
these  later  writers  and  these  unfamiliar  forms  was  the 
emergence  of  the  breed  of  men.  Native  judgment  has 
not  coincided  with  this  view. 

Walt  Whitman,  to  take  the  typical  case,  is  an  idealist 
—  all  live  Americans  are  idealists  —  and  he  exemplifies 
in  literature,  in  a  highly  developed  form,  that  variety  of 
the  American  idealist  who  is  a  believer  in  ideas,  usually 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  243 

in  one  idea  which  he  seizes,  and  is  thereupon  possessed, 
and  often  transported  even  to  living  in  a  fanatical  world. 
Walt  Whitman  was  one  of  these.  The  appealing  thing 
in  him  is  the  pure  primitiveness  of  the  ideas  he  seized; 
the  arresting  thing  —  to  neglect  what  is  merely  grotesque 
in  his  work  —  is  the  boldness  of  outline  and  a  certain  un- 
cramped  strength  with  which  he  presented  these  ideas  of 
nature,  fraternity,  and  toil.  The  ideas  themselves  are  as 
fundamental  in  the  social  world  as  are  the  ideas  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  In  their  acceptance  abroad 
as  a  peculiarly  American  expression  there  was  an  element 
of  preconception;  such  primitiveness,  so  loud  an  emphasis, 
such  a  careless  defiance  of  conventions  of  art  and  speech, 
belonged  to  a  democracy  —  it  was  as  Shakespeare  might 
have  portrayed  it;  but  to  the  minds  which  accepted  Whit- 
man, the  democrat  was  still  a  cousin  to  Caliban.  Whit- 
man had  natural  poetic  force  without  art;  when  he  forgot 
his  camerado  role  as  the  democrat  vagabond  under  whose 
sombrero  was  all  America,  he  wrote  a  few  fine  lyrics;  but 
to  foreigners,  who  find  in  him  the  nationality  they  miss  in 
the  old  group,  the  result  must  be  disappointingly  small  as 
the  type  and  outcome  of  three  centuries  of  slowly  cul- 
minating English  toil  in  a  great  land;  and  to  us  at  home, 
gazing  half  humorously  on,  when  we  take  time  to  think  of 
it  with  a  moment's  passing  seriousness,  it  seems  only  the 
caricature  that  deforms  truth.  So  Dore  might  have  drawn 
us,  so  Rabelais  have  humorized  us;  extravagance  of  line 
and  laughter  could  go  no  further.  To  become  what  Whit- 
man was,  Americans,  who,  more  than  Englishmen,  are  the 
heirs  of  all  Europe,  must  first  denude  themselves  of  that 
larger  civilization  with  which  they  are  integral,  and  be 
an  Ishmael  among  nations.  A  poet  in  whom  a  whole  na- 
tion declines  to  find  its  likeness  cannot  be  regarded  as 


244  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

representative,  though  he  may  smack  strongly  of  some 
raw  earth  in  the  great  domain.  It  is  more  reasonable  to 
find  the  national  literary  genius,  as  a  fellow  of  universal 
art  with  its  peers,  in  the  appropriation  of  our  best  by 
foreign  nations  in  those  authors  that  are  now  classical 
with  us,  the  group  in  whom  we  find,  as  a  nation,  our  past, 
our  ideals,  and  our  daily  life  of  home  and  heaven. 

The  literature  which  has  been  treated  here  flowered 
in  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  and,  except  in  the 
late  Western  blossom,  was  beyond  its  prime  at  the  opening 
of  the  civil  war,  in  i860.  The  complete  failure  of  this 
literature  to  establish  an  American  tradition  —  none  of 
its  authors  left  any  successor  in  the  same  line  —  indicates 
something  parasitical  in  it,  as  if  it  were  not  self  fed;  a 
literature  fed  from  European  culture  we  have  had,  but 
it  does  not  perpetuate  itself  in  an  American  culture;  and 
in  the  change  of  conditions,  apparently,  it  is  only  from  a 
new  growth   that  literature  may  now  be  anticipated. 

There  is  one  striking  sign  that  the  elder  literature  has 
retreated  into  the  past.  While  it  flourished,  it  had  in- 
fluence upon  that  large  mass  of  writing  which  may  be 
called  secondary  literature,  by  which  is  meant  the  product 
that  arises  from  the  practical  use  of  literature  as  a  social 
instrument  —  always  the  larger  part  in  any  age,  whether 
in  sermon,  journal,  or  magazine.  Now  the  influence  runs 
rather  the  other  way,  and  journalism  and  its  cognate 
forms  affect  the  higher  modes  of  literature  by  enforcing 
upon  it  something  of  its  own  conditions,  standards,  and 
uses.  Not  to  enter  in  detail  upon  that  period  of  dubious 
fame  which  fills  the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  it  is 
plain  for  example,  that  the  literary  treatment  of  history, 
so  admirable  in  other  historians  of  the  older  time,  came  to 
its  end  in  Parkman,  the  friend  and  mate  of  the  Cambridge 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  245 

group  in  its  age.  The  period  in  question  has  been  filled 
with  fiction,  largely  from  French  models,  both  realistic 
and  romantic,  with  poetry  in  which  Tennyson,  Rossetti, 
and,  among  older  writers,  Herrick  have  been  the  prevail- 
ing foreign  types,  and  with  no  significant  prose  other  than 
fiction.  The  high  average  excellence  of  this  work  has, 
nevertheless,  failed  to  secure  for  its  authors  the  individual 
eminence  and  national  welcome  that  belonged  to  the  older 
time.  The  touch  of  literature  on  the  public  has  been 
mainly,  almost  exclusively,  through  magazines,  which  have 
determined  both  its  objects  of  interest  and  it  molds  of  ex- 
pression, leading  to  a  predominance  of  the  brief  and  the 
impressionable  in  kind,  and  of  the  versatile  in  talent.  The 
singleness  of  aim  characteristic  of  Hawthorne,  Emerson, 
and  Longfellow  is  not  found;  neither  is  the  element  of 
race  or  of  academic  tradition  conspicuous. 

From  another  point  of  view,  the  cleavage  which  is  thus 
denoted  in  many  ways  between  the  old  and  the  present, 
while  it  sets  the  writers  of  the  last  age  apart,  indicates  a 
closer  welding  of  the  literary  spirit  with  the  nation,  a 
more  perfect  union  of  the  people  and  their  writers.  This 
is  plain  in  the  realistic  and  romantic  fiction  of  the  latest 
time,  and  here  and  there  in  some  lonely  strain  of  verse. 
It  does  not  seem,  however,  that  our  writers  feel  the  sus- 
taining strength  of  national  life  supporting  them  in  any- 
thing like  the  same  degree  that  the  old  group  felt  the 
power  of  the  local  cultures  of  which  they  were  the  climax 
and  expression.  What  our  old  literature  lacked,  after  all, 
was  power;  it  is  this  deficiency  that  makes  it  at  best 
only  a  minor  literature,  in  comparison  with  the  literatures 
of  the  large  world.  The  nation  was  not  back  of  it;  only 
parts  and  fragments  of  the  nation.  The  same  lack  of 
power  continues.    Timidity  was  a  characteristic  of  those 


246  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

authors,  as  has  been  said,  with  but  one  or  two  exceptions; 
and  this  timidity  also  lasts,  and  is  shown  in  the  rarity  of 
really  great  ambition  or  important  tasks;  we  are  too  con- 
tent to  feed  the  presses  merely.  Imitativeness,  too,  has 
reached  its  limits;  there  is  hardly  an  author  of  English 
fame,  not  to  speak  of  the  Continent  also,  from  whom 
our  men  of  letters,  great  or  small,  have  not  borrowed, 
sooner  or  later,  in  theme,  style,  and  temperament,  till 
sometimes  it  seems  as  if  American  literature  were  a 
whispering  gallery  of  the  Muses,  and  little  more;  in  this 
exhaustion  of  the  secondary  method  of  the  academic  tradi- 
tion, we  may  come  back  at  last  to  our  natural  voices  and 
find  ourselves  after  the  necessary  period  of  apprentice- 
ship in  our  art,  as  English  poets,  who  had  greatness  in 
them,  also  did.  To  be  an  echo  of  contemporary  London 
would  be  too  despicable  a  fate.  It  is  rather  for  us  to  re- 
turn to  the  old  group  for  such  lessons  as  they  can  afford 
us  in  their  devotion  to  the  greatest  masters  of  all  the 
world,  in  their  single-minded  and  high-aimed  art,  and  in 
their  interpretation  of  national  ideals,  and,  relying  on 
this  larger  and  more  composite  people  with  whom  we  are 
more  closely  blended  and  fused,  to  endeavor  to  give  noble 
expression  to  the  common  life  and  the  lofty  hope,  the 
breadth  and  lift  of  the  people,  and  again  to  bring  from 
a  democracy,  enriched  with  all  the  cultures  of  the  past 
and  the  blood  of  all  races,  the  flower  of  art. 

To  sum  up,  then,  the  characteristics  that  have  been 
made  prominent  here,  our  past  literature  is  in  the  main 
sectional,  a  blossom  from  the  stock  of  old  or  young  com- 
munities in  the  East  and  distant  West,  and  deeply  in- 
debted to  its  historic  localities  for  theme,  atmosphere, 
and  cast  of  mind;  it  also,  in  its  most  imaginative  phases, 
enters  into  the  common  life  of  the  human  spirit,  lives  in 


RESULTS   AND    CONDITIONS  247 

the  domain  of  universal  art,  and  finds  a  welcome  in  all 
Occidental  nations  as  intelligent  and  warm  as  is  ever 
vouchsafed  to  literature  out  of  its  own  country;  and  it  has 
achieved  this  high  distinction  because  of  its  frank  use  of 
the  tradition  of  literature  in  all  Western  civilization.  It 
has  been  controlled  by  the  academic,  artistic,  and  ro- 
mantic spirit.  For  our  own  people  it  has  determined  for 
all  time  the  memory  of  our  historical  dawn  in  the  wilder- 
ness, its  coloring  and  character,  and  has  preserved  the 
moral  and  political  ideals  of  that  portion  of  the  people  in 
whom  lay  the  shaping  will  of  the  nation  from  the  forma- 
tion to  the  preservation  of  the  Union;  whatever  the 
future  may  have  in  store,  our  ideal  past,  supplemented  for 
a  time  by  history,  will  subsist  in  the  national  consciousness 
as  it  is  expressed  in  these  authors.  Much  of  the  life  of  the 
nation  in  its  various  divisions  found  no  record,  and  has 
perished.  This  literature  seems,  and  is,  inadequate;  it 
bears  no  fit  proportion  to  the  greatness  of  the  nation 
which  swiftly  outgrows  it.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
supplemented  in  the  life,  which  it  so  partially  feeds,  by 
world-literature,  and  in  overwhelming  measure  by  the 
English,  of  which  we  are  heirs  of  time.  In  this  fact  of 
our  national  life  —  and  perhaps  in  the  practice  of  our 
authors  also  —  may  be  found  the  foreshadowing  of  a 
time  when  the  effectual  literature  of  the  race  shall  be  in 
a  larger  measure  a  world-literature.  Special  cultures  arise 
—  Judea,  Athens,  Rome,  Italian,  English,  French,  Ger- 
man —  and  mingle  with  currents  from  above  and  under, 
and  with  crossing  circles  in  the  present;  and  the  best 
that  man  has  found  in  any  quarter,  nationalized  in  many 
peoples,  takes  the  race  and  shapes  it  to  itself  after  its  own 
image,  and  especially  with  power  in  those  who  live  the 
soul's  life,  till  the  world  shall  be  knit  into  one;  such  a 


248  AMERICA   IN   LITERATURE 

providence  seems  to  reside  in  history.  That  is  a  far  hope 
—  the  Christian  dream.  But  now  in  our  own  time,  and 
this  halt  of  our  literary  genius,  it  is  plain  that  our  nobler 
literature,  with  its  little  Western  after-glow,  belonged  to 
an  heredity  and  environment  and  a  spirit  of  local  culture 
whose  place,  in  the  East,  was  before  the  great  passion  of 
the  Civil  War,  and,  in  the  West,  has  also  passed  away. 
It  all  lies  a  generation,  and  more,  behind  us.  The  field  is 
open,  and  calls  loudly  for  new  champions. 


AMERICAN  LITERATURE 

AN  ENCYCLOPEDIC  VIEW 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC  VIEW^ 

BEGINNINGS 

The  earliest  books  which  are  commonly  described  as. 
the  beginnings  of  American  literature  were  written  by  men! 
born  and  bred  in  England;  they  were  published  there;! 
they  were,  in  fact,  an  undivided  part  of  English  literature,! 
belonging  to  the  province  of  exploration  and  geographical! 
description  and  entirely  similar  in  matter  and  style  to 
other  works  of  voyagers  and  colonizers  that  illustrate  the , 
expansion  of  England.  They  contain  the  materials  of! 
history  in  a  form  of  good  Elizabethan  narrative,  always 
vigorous  in  language,  often  vivid  and  picturesque.  John 
Smith  ( 1 579-1 631)  wrote  the  first  of  these,  "A  True 
Relation  of  such  Occurrences  and  Accidents  of  Note  as 
hath  happened  in  Virginia"  (1608),  and  he  later  added 
other  accounts  of  the  country  to  the  north.  William 
Strachey,  a  Virginian  official  of  whom  little  is  known 
biographically,  described  (1610)  the  shipwreck  of  Sir 
Thomas  Gates  on  the  Bermudas,  which  is  believed  to 
have  yielded  Shakespeare  suggestions  for  "The  Tempest." 
Colonel  Henry  Norwood  (d.  1689),  hitherto  unidentified, 
of  Leckhampton,  Gloucestershire,  a  person  eminent  for 
loyalty  in  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  and  distinguished  in  the 

1  Reprinted  by  pennission  from  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica, 
Eleventh  Edition.  Copyright  in  the  United  States  of  America,  1910, 
by  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  Company. 

251 


252  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

civil  wars,  later  governor  of  Tangiers  and  a  member  of 
Parliament  for  Gloucester,  wrote  an  account  of  his  voyage 
to  Virginia  as  an  adventurer,  in  1649.  These  are  charac- 
teristic works  of  the  earliest  period,  and  illustrate  vari- 
ously the  literature  of  exploration  which  exists  in  numer- 
ous examples  and  is  preserved  for  historical  reasons.  The 
settlement  of  the  colonies  was,  in  general,  attended  by 
such  narratives  of  adventure  or  by  accounts  of  the  state  of 
the  country  or  by  documentary  record  of  events.  Thus 
George  Alsop  (b.  1638)  wrote  the  "Character  of  the 
Province  of  Maryland"  (1666),  and  Daniel  Denton  a 
"Brief  Description  of  New  York"  (1670),  and  in  Vir- 
ginia the  progress  of  affairs  was  dealt  with  by  William 
Stith  (1689-1755),  Robert  Beverly  (f.  1700),  and  Wil- 
liam Byrd  (i 674-1 744).  Each  settlement  in  turn,  as  it 
came  into  prominence  or  provoked  curiosity,  found  its 
geographer  and  annalist,  and  here  and  there  sporadic  pens 
essayed  some  practical  topic.  The  product,  howeyer,  is 
now  an  indistinguishable  mass,  and  titles  and  authors 
alike  are  found  only  in  antiquarian  lore.  The  distribu- 
tion of  literary  activity  was  very  uneven  along  the  sea- 
board; it  was  naturally  greatest  in  the  more  thriving  and 
important  colonies,  and  bore  some  relation  to  their  com- 
mercial prosperity  and  political  activity  and  to  the  close- 
ness of  the  connection  with  the  home  culture  of  England. 
From  the  beginning  New  England,  owing  to  the  character 
of  its  people  and  its  ecclesiastical  rule,  was  the  chief  seat 
of  the  early  literature,  and  held  a  position  apart  from  the 
other  colonies  as  a  community  characterized  by  an  in- 
tellectual life.  There  the  first  printing  press  was  set  up, 
the  first  college  founded,  and  an  abundant  literature  was 
produced. 
'  The  characteristic  fact  in  the  Puritan  colonies  is  that 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  253 

literature  there  was  in  the  hands  of  its  leading  citizens 
and  was  a  chief  concern  in  their  minds.  There  were  books 
*of  exploration  and  description  as  in  the  other  colonies, 
such  as  William  Wood's  (d.  1639)  ^'New  England's  Pros- 
pect" (1634),  and  John  Josselin's  "New  England's 
Rarities"  (1672),  and  tales  of  adventure  in  the  wilderness 
and  on  the  sea,  most  commonly  described  as  "remarkable 
providences,"  in  the  vigorous  Elizabethan  narrative;  but 
besides  all  this  the  magistracy  and  the  clergy  normally  set 
themselves  to  the  labor  of  history,  controversy  and  coim- 
sel,  and  especially  to  the  care  of  religion.  The  governors, 
beginning  with  William  Bradford  (1590-165  7)  of 
Plymouth,  and  John  Winthrop  (i 588-1 649)  of  Massa- 
chusetts Bay,  wrote  the  annals  of  their  times,  and  the  line 
of  historians  was  continued  by  Winslow,  Nathaniel  Mor- 
ton, Prince,  Hubbard  and  Hutchinson.  The  clergy,  headed 
by  John  Cotton  (158 5- 1652),  Thomas  Hooker  (1586?- 
1647),  Nathaniel  Ward  (i579?-i652),  Roger  Williams 
( 1 600-1 683),  Richard  Mather  (i 596-1 669),  John  Eliot 
( 1 604-1 690),  produced  sermons,  platforms,  catechisms, 
theological  dissertations,  tracts  of  all  sorts,  and  their  line 
also  was  continued  by  Shepard,  Norton,  Wise,  the  later 
Mathers  and  scores  of  other  ministers.  The  older  clergy 
were  not  inferior  in  power  of  learning  to  the  leaders  of; 
their  own  communion  in  England,  and  they  commanded  \ 
the  same  prose  that  characterizes  the  Puritan  tracts  of  the  \ 
mother  country;  nor  did  the  kind  of  writing  deteriorate 
in  their  successors.  This  body  of  divines  in  successive 
generations  gave  to  early  New  England  literature  its 
overwhelming  ecclesiastical  character;  it  was  in  the  main 
a  church  literature,  and  its  secular  books  also  were  con- 
trolled and  colored  by  the  Puritan  spirit.  The  per- 
vasiveness of  religion  is  well  illustrated  by  the  three  books 


254  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

which  formed  through  the  entire  colonial  period  the  most 
domestic  reading  of  the  Puritan  home.  These  were  ''The 
Bay  Psalm  Book"  (1640),  which  was  the  first  book 
published  in  America;  Michael  Wigglesworth's  (1631- 
1705)  "Day  of  Doom"  (1662),  a  doggerel  poem;  and  the 
"New  England  Primer"  (c.  1690),  called  "the  Little 
Bible."  The  sole  voice  heard  in  opposition  was  Thomas 
Morton's  satirical  "New  England  Canaan"  (1637),  whose 
author  was  sent  out  of  the  colony  for  the  scandal  of 
Merrymount,  but  satire  itself  remained  religious  in  Ward's 
"Simple  Cobbler  of  Agawam"  (1647).  Poetry  was  repre- 
sented in  Anne  Bradstreet's  (1612-1672)  "The  Tenth 
Muse  lately  Sprung  Up  in  America"  (1650),  and  was  con- 
tinued by  a  succession  of  doggerel  writers,  mostly  min- 
isters or  schoolmasters,  Noyes,  Oakes,  Folger,  Tompson, 
Byles  and  others.  The  world  of  books  also  included  a 
good  proportion  of  Indian  war  narratives  and  treatises 
relating  to  the  aborigines.  The  close  of  the  17th  century 
shows  literature,  however,  still  unchanged  in  its  main 
position  as  the  special  concern  of  the  leaders  of  the  state. 
It  is  Chief- Justice  Samuel  Sewall's  (i  652-1 730)  "Diary" 
(which  remained  in  manuscript  until  1878)  that  affords 
the  intimate  view  of  the  culture  and  habits  of  the  com- 
munity; and  he  was  known  to  his  contemporaries  by 
several  publications,  one  of  which,  "The  Selling  of 
Joseph"  (1700),  was  the  first  American  anti-slavery  tract. 


PURITANISM 

The  literature  of  the  first  century,  exemplified  by  these 
few  titles,  is  considerable  in  bulk,  and  like  colonial  litera- 
ture elsewhere  is  preserved  for  historical  reasons.  In 
general,  it  records  the  political  progress  and  social  con- 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  255 

ditions  of  the  Puritan  state,  and  the  contents  01  the  Puri-  / 
tan  mind.    The  development  of  the  original  settlement 
took  place  without  any  violent  check.    Though  the  colony 
was  continually  recruited  by  fresh  immigration,  the  origi- 
nal 20,000  who  arrived  before  1640  had  established  the 
principles  of  the  state,  and  their  will  and  ideas  remained 
dominant  after  the  Restoration  as  before.     It  was  a 
theocratic  state  controlled  by  the  clergy,  and  yet  contain- 
ing the  principle  of  liberty.    The  second  and  third  genera- 
tions born  on  the  soil,  nevertheless,  showed  some  de- 
cadence;  notwithstanding  the  effort  to  provide  against 
intellectual  isolation  and  mental  poverty  by  the  founda- 
tion of  Harvard  College,  they  felt  the  effects  of  their 
situation  across  the  sea  and  on  the  borders  of  a  wilderness. 
The  people  were  a  hard-faring  folk  and  engaged  in  a 
material  struggle  to  establish  the  plantations  and  develop 
commerce  on  the  sea;   their  other  life  was  in  religion 
soberly  practised  and  intensely  felt.    They  were  a  people  i 
of  one  book,  in  the  true  sense,  —  the  Bible;  it  was  the) 
organ  of  their  mental  life  as  well  as  of  their  spiritual ' 
feelings.     For  them,  it  was  in  the  place  of  the  higher 
literature.    But  long  resident  there  in  the  strip  between 
the  sea  and  the  forest,  cut  off  from  the  world  and  con- ; 
signed  to  hard  labor  and  to  spiritual  ardors,  they  devel-j 
oped  a  fanatical  temper;  their  religious  life  hardened  and' 
darkened;    intolerance    and   superstition   grew.      Time, 
nevertheless,  ripened  new  changes,  and  the  colony  was  to 
be  brought  back  from  its  religious  seclusion  into  the  nor- 
mal paths  of  modern  development.    The  sign  was  con- 
tained, perhaps,  most  clearly  in  the  change  effected  in  the 
new   charter    granted    by    King   William    which    made 
property  the  basis  of  the  franchise  in  place  of  church- 
membership,  and  thus  set  the  state  upon  an  economic 


256  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

instead  of  a  religious  foundation.  It  is  rather  by  men 
than  by  books  that  these  times  are  remembered,  but  it  is 
by  the  men  who  were  writers  of  books.  In  general,  the 
career  of  the  three  Mathers  coincides  with  the  history  of 
the  older  Puritanism,  and  their  personal  characteristics 
reflect  its  stages  as  their  writings  contain  its  successive 
traits.  Richard  Mather,  the  emigrant,  had  been  joint 
author  in  the  composition  of  "The  Bay  Psalm  Book,"  and 
served  the  colony  among  the  first  of  its  leaders.  It  was 
in  his  son.  Increase  Mather  (1639-1723),  that  the  theoc- 
racy, properly  speaking,  culminated.  He  was  not  only  a 
divine,  president  of  Harvard  College  and  a  prolific  writer; 
but  he  was  dominant  in  the  state,  the  chief  man  of  affairs. 
It  was  he  who,  sent  to  represent  the  colony  in  England, 
received  from  King  William  the  new  charter.  His  son. 
Cotton  Mather  (1663-172 8),  succeeded  to  his  father's 
distinction;  but  the  changed  condition  is  reflected  in  his 
non-participation  in  affairs;  he  was  a  man  of  the  study  and 
led  there  a  narrower  life  than  his  father's  had  been.  He 
was,  nevertheless,  the  most  broadly  characteristic  figure 
of  the  Puritan  of  his  time.  He  was  able  and  learned,  ab- 
normally laborious,  leaving  over  400  titles  attributed  to 
him;  and  at  the  same  time  he  was  an  ascetic  and  vision- 
ary. The  work  by  which  he  is  best  remembered,  the 
"Magnalia  Christi  Americana,  or  the  Ecclesiastical 
History  of  New  England  from  its  First  Planting  in  the 
Year  1620,  unto  the  Year  of  our  Lord  1698"  (1702),  is 
the  chief  historical  monument  of  the  period,  and  the 
most  considerable  literary  work  done  in  America  up  to 
that  time.  It  is  encyclopedic  in  scope,  and  contains  an 
immense  accumulation  of  materials  relating  to  life  and 
events  in  the  colony.  There  the  New  England  of  the  17th 
century  is  displayed.    His  numerous  other  works  still 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  257 

further  amplify  the  period,  and  taken  all  together  his 
writings  best  illustrate  the  contents  of  Puritanism  in 
New  England.  The  power  of  the  clergy  was  waning, 
but  even  in  the  political  sphere  it  was  far  from  extinction, 
and  it  continued  under  its  scheme  of  church  government 
to  guard  jealously  the  principles  of  liberty.  In  John 
Wise's  (1652-172  5)  "Vindication  of  the  Government  of 
New  England  Churches"  (171 7)  a  precursor  of  the  Revo- 
lution is  felt.  It  was  in  another  sphere,  however,  thaT] 
(Puritanism  in  New  England  was  to  reach  its  height,  in- 
tellectually and  spiritually  alike,  in  the  brilliant  per- 
sonality of  Jonathan  Edwards  (i 703-1 758),  its  last  great 
product.  He  was  free  of  affairs,  and  lived  essentially 
the  private  life  of  a  thinker.  He  displayed  in  youth 
extraordinary  precocity  and  varied  intellectual  curiosity, 
and  showed  at  the  same  early  time  a  temperament  of 
spiritual  sensitiveness  and  religious  ideality  which  sug- 
gests the  youth  of  a  poet  rather  than  of  a  logician.  It  was 
not  without  a  struggle  that  he  embraced  sincerely  the 
/Calvinistic  scheme  of  divine  rule,  but  he  was  able  to/ 
/  reconcile  the  doctrine  in  its  most  fearful  forms  with  thQ 
Y  serenity  and  warmth  of  his  own  spirit;  for  his  soul  at  all 
times  seems  as  lucid  as  his  mind,  and  his  affections  were 
singularly  tender  and  refined.  He  served  as  minister  to 
the  church  at  Northampton;  and,  driven  from  that  post, 
he  was  for  eight  years  a  missionary  to  the  Indians  at 
Stockbridge;  finally  he  was  made  President  of  Prince- 
ton College,  where  after  a  few  weeks  incumbency  he  died. 
The  works  upon  which  his  fame  is  founded  are  "Treatise 
concerning  the  Religious  Affections"  (1746),  "On  the 
Freedom  of  the  Will"  (1754),  "Treatise  on  Original  Sin" 
(1758).  They  exhibit  extraordinary  reasoning  powers 
and  place  him  among  the  most  eminent  theologians.    He 


2S8  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

I  contributed  by  his  preaching  great  inspiring  force  to 
f  the  revival,  known  as  "the  Great  Awakening/'  which 
swept  over  the  dry  and  formal  Puritanism  of  the  age  and 
was  its  last  great  flame.    In  him  New  England  ideaHsm 
had  come  to  birth.    He  illustrates  better  than  all  others, 
the  power  of  Puritanism  as  a  spiritual  force;  and  in 
him  only  did  the  power  reach  intellectual  expression  in 
a  memorable  way  for  the  larger  world.    The  ecclesiastical 
\  literature  of  Puritanism,  abundant  as  it  was,  produced 
i  no  other  work  of  power;  nor  did  the  Puritan  patronage 
\  of  literature  prove  fruitful  in  other  jRelds.    If  Puritanism 
was  thus  infertile,  it  nevertheless  prepared  the  soil.    It 
impressed  upon  New  England  the  stamp  of  the  mind; 
I  the  entire  community  was  by  its  means  intellectually  as 
fwell  as  morally  bred;  and  to  its  training  and  the  pre- 
^  disposition  it  established  in  the  genius  of  the  people  may 
be  ascribed  the  respect  for  the  book  which  has  always 
characterized  that  section,  the  serious  temper  and  eleva- 
tion of  its  later  literature  and  the  spiritual  quality  of 
the  imagination  which  is  so  marked  a  quality  of  its 
authors. 


FRANKLIN 

The  secularization  of  life  in  New  England,  which  went 
on  concurrently  with  the  decline  of  the  clergy  in  social 
power,  was  incidental  to  colonial  growth.  The  practi- 
cal force  of  the  people  had  always  been  strong;  material 
prosperity  increased  and  a  powerful  class  of  merchants 
grew  up;  public  questions  multiplied  in  variety  and 
I  gained  in  importance.  The  affairs  of  the  world  had  defi- 
^  nitely  obtained  the  upper  hand.  The  new  spirit  found 
its  representative  in  the  great  figure  of  Benjamin  Franklin 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  259 

( 1 706-1 790),  who,  born  in  Boston,  early  emigrated  to 
Philadelphia,  an  act  which  in  itself  may  be  thought  to 
forecast  the  transfer  of  the  center  of  interest  to  the  west 
and  south  and  specifically  to  that  city  where  the  congress 
was  to  sit.  Franklin  was  a  printer,  and  the  books  he 
circulated  are  an  index  to  the  uses  of  reading  in  his 
generation.  Practical  works,  such  as  almanacs,  were 
plentiful,  and  it  is  characteristic  that  Franklin's  name  is, 
in  literature,  first  associated  with  "Poor  Richard's 
Almanack"  (1732).  The  literature  of  the  i8th  century.» 
outside  of  New  England  continued  to  be  constituted  of 
works  of  exploration,  description,  colonial  affairs,  with 
some  sprinkling  of  crude  science  and  doctrines  of  wealth; 
but  it  yields  no  distinguished  names  or  remembered 
titles.  Franklin's  character  subsumes  the  spirit  of  itl 
In  him  thrift  and  benevolence  were  main  constituents; 
scientific  curiosity  of  a  useful  sort  and  invention  dis- 
tinguished him;  after  he  had  secured  a  competence, 
public  interests  filled  his  mature  years.  In  him  was  the 
focus  of  the  federating  impulses  of  the  time,  and  as  the 
representative  of  the  colonies  in  England  and  during  the 
Revolution  in  France,  he  was  in  his  proper  place  as  the 
greatest  citizen  of  his  country.  He  was,  first  of  men, 
broadly  interested  in  all  the  colonies,  and  in  his  mind 
the  future  began  to  be  comprehended  in  its  true  per- 
spective and  scale;  and  for  these  reasons  to  him  properly 
belongs  the  title  of  "the  First  American."  The  type  of 
his  character  set  forth  in  the  "Autobiography"  (181 7) 
was  profoundly  American  and  prophetic  of  the  plain 
people's  ideal  of  success  in  a  democracy.  It  is  by  his 
character  and  career  rather  than  by  his  works  or  even 
his  public  services  that  he  is  remembered;  he  is  a  type 
of  the  citizen-man.     Older  than  his  companions,  and 


26o  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

plain  while  they  were  of  an  aristocratic  stamp,  he  greatens 
over  them  in  the  popular  mind  as  age  greatens  over  youth; 
but  it  was  these  companions  who  were  to  lay  the  foun- 
Idations  of  the  political  literature  of  America.  With  the 
increasing  political  life  lawyers  as  a  class  had  naturally 
come  into  prominence  as  spokesmen  and  debaters.  A 
young  generation  of  orators  sprang  up,  of  whom  James 
Otis  (172 5-1 783)  in  the  North,  and  Patrick  Henry 
( 1 736-1 799)  in  the  South,  were  the  most  brilliant;  and  a 
group  of  statesmen,  of  whom  the  most  notable  were 
Thomas  Jefferson  (1743-182 6),  James  Madison  (1751- 
1836),  and  Alexander  Hamilton  (175 7-1804),  held  the 
political  direction  of  the  times;  in  the  speeches  and  state- 
papers  of  these  orators  and  statesmen  and  their  fellows 
the  political  literature  of  the  colonies  came  to  hold  the 
first  place.  The  chief  memorials  of  this  literature  are 
"The. Declaration  of  Independence"  (1776),  "The  Fed- 
eralist" (1788),  a  treatise  on  the  principles  of  free 
government,  and  Washington's  "Addresses"  ( 1 789-1 793- 
1796).  Thus  politics  became,  in  succession  to  explora- 
tion and  religion,  the  most  important  literary  element  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  i8th  century. 


I  8th  century  poetry  and  fiction 

The  most  refined  forms  of  literature  also  began  to  re- 
ceive intelligent  attention  towards  the  close  of  the  period. 
The  Revolution  in  passing  struck  out  some  sparks  of 
balladry  and  song,  but  the  inspiration  of  the  spirit  of  na- 
tionality was  first  felt  in  poetry  by  Philip  Freneau  (1752- 
1832),  whose  "Poems"  (1786)  marked  the  bestpoetical 
achievement  up  to  his  time.  Patriotism  was  also  a  rul- 
ing motive  in  the  works  of  the  three  poets  associated  with 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  261 

Yale  College,  John  Trumbull  (i 750-1831),  Timothy, 
Dwight  ( 1 752-181 7)  and  Joel  Barlow  (1754-1812),' 
authors  respectively  of  ^^McFingal"  (1782),  a  Hudi- 
brastic  satire  of  the  Revolution,  ^^The  Conquest  of 
Canaan''  (1785),  an  epic,  and  ^'The  Vision  of  Columbus'* 
(1787),  later  remade  into  "The  Columbiad,"  also  an  epic. 
These  poets  gathered  about  them  a  less  talented  company, 
and  all  were  denominated  in  common  the  "Hartford 
Wits,"  by  which  name  rather  than  by  their  works  they  are 

I  remembered.    The  national  hymn,  "Hail  Columbia,"  was 
composed  by  Joseph  Hopkinson  (i 770-1842)  in  1798. 

(Fiction,  in  turn,  was  first  cultivated  by  Charles  Brockden 
Brown  (1771-1810),  a  Philadelphian,  who  wrote  six 
romantic  novels  (i  798-1801)  after  the  style  of  Godwin, 
but  set  in  the  conditions  of  the  new  world  and  mixing 
local  description  and  observation  with  the  material  of 
mystery  and  terror.;  Fiction  had  been  earlier  attempted 
by  Mrs.  Susanna  Haswell  Rowson,  whose  "Charlotte 
Temple"  (1790)  is  remembered,  and  contemporaneously 
by  Mrs.  Hannah  Webster  Foster  in  "The  Coquette" 
(1797)  and  by  Royall  Tyler  (1758-1826)  in  "The 
Algerian  Captive"  (1799) ;  but  to  Brown  properly  belongs  *- 
the  title  of  the  first  American  novelist,  nor  are  his  works 
without  invention  and  intensity  and  a  certain  distinction 
that  secure  for  them  permanent  remembrance.  The 
drama  formally  began  its  career  on  a  regular  stage  and 
with  an  established  company,  in  1786  at  New  York, 
with  the  acting  of  Royall  Tyler's  comedy  "The  Contrast"; 
but  the  earliest  American  play  was  Thomas  Godfrey's 
( 1 736-1 763)  tragedy,  "The  Prince  of  Parthia,"  acted  in 
Philadelphia  in  1667.  William  Dunlap  (i  766-1 839)  is, 
however,  credited  with  being  the  father  of  the  American 
theater  on  the  New  York  stage,  where  his  plays  were 


r- 


262  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

produced.  One  other  earlier  book  deserves  mention, 
John  Woolman's  (i 720-1 772)  "Journal"  (1775),  an 
autobiography  with  much  charm.  With  these  various 
attempts  the  i8th  century  was  brought  to  an  end.  In 
200  years  no  literary  classic  had  been  produced  in 
America. 


THE   NEW  NATION 

The  new  nation,  which  with  the  19  th  century  began  its 
integral  career,  still  retained  the  great  disparities  which 
originally  existed  between  the  diverse  colonies.  Political 
unity,  the  simplest  of  the  social  unities,  had  been 
achieved;  "a  more  perfect  union,"  in  the  language  of  the 
founders,  had  been  formed;  but  even  in  the  political 
sphere  the  new  state  bore  in  its  bosom  disuniting  forces 
which  again  and  again  threatened  to  rive  it  apart  until 
they  were  dissipated  in  the  Civil  War;  and  in  the  other 
spheres  of  its  existence,  intellectually,  morally,  socially, 
its  unity  was  far  from  being  accomplished.  The  expan- 
sion of  its  territory  over  the  continental  area  brought  new 
local  diversity  and  prolonged  the  contrasts  of  border  con- 
ditions with  those  of  the  long-settled  communities.  This 
state  of  affairs  was  reflected  in  the  capital  fact  that  there 
was  no  metropolitan  center  in  which  the  tradition  and 
forces  of  the  nation  were  concentrated.  Washington  was 
a  center  of  political  administration;  but  that  was  all. 
The  nation  grew  slowly,  indeed,  into  consciousness  of  its 
own  existence;  but  it  was  without  united  history,  with- 
out national  traditions  of  civilization  and  culture,  and  it 
was  committed  to  the  untried  idea  of  democracy.  It 
was  founded  in  a  new  faith;  yet  at  the  moment  that  it 
proclaimed  the  equality  of  men,  its  own  social  structure 


/I 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  263 

and  habit  North  and  South  contradicted  the  declaration, 
not  merely  by  the  fact  of  slavery,  but  by  the  life  of  its 
classes.  The  South  long  remained  oligarchic;  in  the  North 
aristocracy  slowly  melted  away.  The  coincidence  of  an., 
economic  opportunity  with  a  philosophic  principle  is  the ' 
secret  of  the  career  of  American  democracy  in  its  first 
century.  The  vast  resources  of  an  undeveloped  country 
gave  this  opportunity  to  the  individual,  while  the  nation 
was  pledged  by  its  fundamental  idea  to  material  pros- 
perity for  the  masses,  popular  education  and  the  common 
welfare,  as  the  supreme  test  of  government.  In  this 
labor,  subduing  the  new  world  to  agriculture,  trade  and 
manufactures,  the  forces  of  the  nation  were  spent,  under 
the  complication  of  maintaining  the  will  of  the  people  as 
the  directing  power;  the  subjugation  of  the  soil  and 
experience  in  popular  government  are  the  main  facts  of 
American  history.  In  the  course  of  this  task  the  practice 
of  the  fine  arts  was  hardly  more  than  an  incident.  When 
anyone  thinks  of  Greece,  he  thinks  first  of  her  arts;  when 
anyone  thinks  of  America,  he  thinks  of  her  arts  last. 
Literature,  in  the  sense  of  the  printed  word,  has  had  a 
great  career  in  America;  as  the  vehicle  of  use,  books, 
journals,  literary  communication,  educational  works  and 
libraries  have  filled  the  land;  nowhere  has  the  power  of 
the  printed  word  ever  been  so  great,  nowhere  has  the  man 
of  literary  genius  ever  had  so  broad  an  opportunity  to 
affect  the  minds  of  men  contemporaneously.  But,  in  the 
artistic  sense,  literature,  at  most,  has  been  locally  illus- 
trated by  a  few  eminent  names. 

The  most  obvious  fact  with  regard  to  this  literature  is 
that  —  to  adopt  a  convenient  word  —  it  has  been  re- 
gional. It  has  flourished  in  parts  of  the  country,  very 
distinctly  marked,  and  is  in  each  case  affected  by  its 


264  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

environment  and  local  culture; 'if  it  incorporates  national 
elements  at  times,  it  seems  to  graft  them  on  its  own  stock. 
The  growth  of  literature  in  these  favored  soils  was  slow 
and  humble.  There  was  no  outburst  of  genius,  no  sudden 
movement,  no  renaissance;  but  very  gradually  a  step  was 
taken  in  advance  of  the  last  generation,  as  that  had  ad- 
vanced upon  its  forefathers.  The  first  books  of  true  excel- 
lence were  experiments;  they  seem  almost  accidents. 
The  cities  of  Boston,  New  York  and  Philadelphia  were 
lettered  communities;  they  possessed  imported  books,  pro- 
fessional classes,  men  of  education  and  taste.  The  tradi- 
tion of  literature  was  strong,  especially  in  New  England; 
there  were  readers  used  to  the  polite  letters  of  the  past. 
It  was,  however,  in  the  main  the  past  of  Puritanism, 
both  in  England  and  at  home,  and  of  the  i8th  century  in 
general,  on  which  they  were  bred,  with  a  touch  ever  grow- 
ing stronger  of  the  new  European  romanticism.  All  the 
philosophic  ideas  of  the  i8th  century  were  current.  What 
was  most  lacking  was  a  standard  self-applied  by  original 
writers;  and  in  the  absence  of  a  great  national  center  of 
standards  and  traditions,  and  amid  the  poverty  of  such 
small  local  centers  as  the  writers  were  bred  in,  they  sought 
what  they  desired,  not  in  England,  not  in  any  one  country 
nor  in  any  one  literature,  but  in  the-solidarity  of  literature 
itself,  in  the  republic  of  letters,  the  world-state  itself,  — 
the  master-works  of  all  European  lands;  they  became 
either  pilgrims  on  foreign  soil  or  pilgrims  of  the  mitid  in 
fireside  travels.  The  foreign  influences  that  thus  entered 
into  American  literature  are  obvious  and  make  a  large 
part  of  its  history;  but  the  fact  here  brought  out  is  that 
European  literature  and  experience  stood  to  American 
writers  in  lieu  of  a  national  center;  it  was  there  that  both 
standard  and  tradition  were  found. 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  265 

EARLY    19TH   CENTURY   CLASSICS 

American  literature  first  began  to  exist  for  the  larger 
world  in  the  persons  of  Washington  Irving  (178 5- 1859) 
and  James  Fenimore  Cooper  (i  789-1851).  Their  recog- 
nition was  almost  contemporaneous.  "The  Sketch  Book" 
(181 9)  was  the  first  American  book  to  win  reputation  in 
England,  and  "The  Spy"  (1821)  was  the  first  to  obtain 
a  similar  vogue  on  the  Continent.  The  fame  of  both 
authors  is  associated  with  New  York,  and  that  city  took 
first  place  as  the  center  of  the  literature  of  the  period. 
It  was  not  that  New  York  was  more  intellectual  than 
other  parts  of  the  country;  but  it  was  a  highly  prosperous 
community,  where  a  mercantile  society  flourished  and 
consequently  a  certain  degree  of  culture  obtained.  The 
first  American  literature  was  not  the  product  of  a  raw 
democracy  nor  of  the  new  nationality  in  any  sense;  there 
was  nothing  sudden  or  vehement  in  its  generation;  but, 
as  always,  it  was.  the  product  of  older  elements  in  the 
society  where  it  arose  and  flourished  under  the  conditions 
of  precedent  culture.  The  family  of  Irving  were  in 
trade.  Cooper's  father  was  in  the  law.  A  third  writer, 
William  Cullen  Bryant  (1794-18 78),  is  associated  with 
them,  and  though  he  announced  his  poetic  talent  pre- 
cociously by  "Thanatopsis"  (1807),  his  "Poems"  (1832), 
immediately  republished  in  London,  were  the  basis  of  his 
true  fame.  Born  in  Massachusetts,  he  lived  his  long  life 
in  New  York,  and  was  there  a  distinguished  citizen.  His 
father  was  a  physician.  All  three  men  were  not  supremely 
endowed ;  they  do  not  show  the  passion  of  genius  for  its 
work  which  marks  the  great  writers;  they  were,  like  most 
American  writers,  men  with  the  literary  temperament, 
characteristically  gentlemen,  who  essayed  literature  with 


266  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

I  varying  power.  If  the  quality  of  this  early  literature  is 
to  be  appreciated  truly,  the  fact  of  its  provenance  from  a 
society  whose  cultivation  was  simple  and  normal,  a  pro- 
vincial bourgeois  society  of  a  prosperous  democracy,  must 
be  borne  in  mind.  It  came,  not  from  the  people,  but 
from  the  best  classes  developed  under  preceding  con- 
ditions 


IRVING 

Irving  all  his  life  was  in  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen, 
whatever  their  pride  might  be  in  him,  more  a  traveled 
gentlemen  than  one  of  themselves.  He  had  come  home 
to  end  his  days  at  Sunnyside  by  the  Hudson,  but  he  had 
won  fame  in  foreign  fields.  In  his  youth  the  beginnings  of 
his  literary  work  were  most  humble  —  light  contributions 
to  the  press.  He  was  of  a  most  social  nature,  warm,  re- 
fined, humorous,  a  man  belonging  to  the  town.  He  was 
not  seriously  disposed,  idled  much,  and  surprised  his 
fellow-citizens  suddenly  by  a  grotesque  ^'History  of  New 
York"  (1809),  an  extravaganza  satirizing  the  Dutch 
element  of  the  province.  He  discovered  in  writing  this 
work  his  talent  for  humor  and  also  one  part  of  his  literary 
theme,  the  Dutch  tradition;  but  he  did  not  so  convince 
himself  of  his  powers  as  to  continue;  and  it  was  only  after 
the  failure  of  his  commercial  interests  that,  being  thrown 
on  himself  for  support,  he  published  in  London  ten  years 
later,  at  the  age  of  thirty-six,  the  volume  of  sketches  which 
by  its  success  committed  him  to  a  literary  career.  In 
[that  work  he  found  himself;  sentiment  and  distinction 
X)f  style  characterized  it,  and  these  were  his  main  traits. 
He  remained  abroad,  always  favored  in  society  and  living 
in  diplomatic  posts  in  Spain  and  England,  for  seventeen 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  267 

years,  and  he  later  spent  four  years  in  Spain  as  Minister. 
Spain  gave  him  a  larger  opportunity  than  England  for  the 
cultivation  of  romantic  sentiment,  and  he  found  there  his 
best  themes  in  Moorish  legend  and  history.  On  his  return 
to  America  he  added  to  his  subjects  the  exploration  of  the 
West;  and  he  wrote,  besides,  biographies  of  Goldsmith 
and  Washington.  He  was,  as  it  turned  out,  a  voluminous 
writer;  yet  his  books  successively  seem  the  accident  of 
his  situation.  The  excellence  of  his  work  lies  rather  in 
the  treatment  than  the  substance;  primarily,  there  is  the 
pellucid  style,  which  he  drew  from  his  love  of  Goldsmith, 
and  the  charm  of  his  personality  shown  in  his  romantic 
interest,  his  pathos  and  humor  ever  growing  in  delicacy, 
and  his  famliar  touch  with  humanity.  ( He  made  his  name 
American  mainly  by  creating  the  legend  of  the  Hudson, 
and  he  alone  has  linked  his  memory  locally  with  his  coun- 
try so  that  it  hangs  over  the  landscape  and  blends  with 
it  forever ;  lie  owned  his  nativity,  too,  by  his  pictures  of 
the  prairie  and  the  fur-trade  and  by  his  life  of  Washing- 
ton, who  had  laid  his  hand  upon  his  head;  but  he  had 
spent  half  his  life  abroad,  in  the  temperamental  enjoy- 
ment of  the  romantic  suggestion  of  the  old  world,  and  by 
his  writings  he  gave  this  expansion  of  sympathy  and  sen- 
timent to  his  countrymen.  If  his  temperament  was  na- 
tive-born and  his  literary  taste  home-bred,  and  if  his 
affections  gave  a  legend  to  the  countryside  and  his  feel- 
ings expanded  with  the  prairie  and  wilderness,  and  if  he 
sought  to  honor  with  his  pen  the  historic  associations  and 
memory  of  the  land  which  had  honored  him,  it  was,  never- 
theless, the  trans-Atlantic  touch  that  had  loosed  his  genius 
and  mainly  fed  it,  and  this  fact  was  prophetic  of  the 
immediate  course  of  American  literature  and  the  most 
significant  in  his  career. 


268  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 


COOPER 


/      Cooper's  initiation  into  literature  was  similar  to  that 
V  of  Irving.     He  had  received,  perhaps,  something  more 
of  scanty  formal  education,  since  he  attended  Yale  College 
for  a  season,  but  he  early  took  to  the  sea  and  was  a  mid- 
shipman.   He  was  thirty  years  old  before  he  began  to 
write,  and  it  was  almost  an  accident  that  after  the  fail- 
ure of  his  first  novel  he  finished  "The  Spy,"  so  deterring 
was  the  prejudice  that  no  American  book  could  succeed. 
He  was,  however,  a  man  of  great  energy  of  life,  great  force 
of  will;   it  was  his  nature  to  persist.     The  way  once 
f  opened,  he  wrote  voluminously  and  with  great  unevenness. 
His  literary  defects,  both  of  surface  and  construction, 
are  patent.    It  was  not  by  style  nor  by  any  detail  of  plot 
or  character  that  he  excelled;  but  whatever  imperfections 
there  might  be,  his  work  was  alive;  it  had  body,  motion, 
ffire.    He  chose  his  subjects  from  aspects  of  life  famil- 
iar to  him  in  the  fields  of  the  Revolution.    He  thus  estab- 
lished a  vital  connection  with  his  own  country,  and  in  so 
far  he  is  the  most  national  by  his  themes  of  any  of  the 
,  American  writers.    What  he  gave  was  the  scene  of  the 
i  new  world,  both  in  the  forest  and  by  the  fires  of  the . 
;  Revolution  and  on  the  swift  and  daring  American  ships;  \ 
i  but  it  was  especially  by  his  power  to  give  the  sense  of 
the  primitive  wilderness  and  the  ocean  weather,  and 
adventure  there,  that  he  won  success.    In  France,  where 
he  was  popular,  this  came  as  an  echo  out  of  the  real 
world  of  the  west  to  the  dream  of  nature  that  had  lately 
grown  up  in  French  literature;  and,  besides,  of  all  the 
springs  of  interest  native  to  men  in  every  land  adventure 
in  the  wild  is,  perhaps,  the  easiest  to  touch,  the  quickest 
and  most  inflaming  to  respond.    Cooper  stood  for  a  true 


AN  ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  269 

element  in  American  experience  and  conditions,  for  the 
romance  in  the  mere  presence  of  primeval  things  of  nature 
newly  found  by  man  and  opening  to  his  coming;  this 
was  an  imaginative  moment,  and  Cooper  seized  it  by 
his  imagination.  He  especially  did  so  in  the  Indian! 
elements  of  his  tale,  and  gave  permanent  ideality  to  thei 
Indian  type.  The  trait  of  loftiness  which  he  thus  in- 
corporated belongs  with  the  impression  of  the  virgin 
forest  and  prairie,  the  breadth,  the  silence,  and  the  music 
of  universal  nature.  The  distinction  of  his  work  is  to 
open  so  great  a  scene  worthily,  to  give  it  human  dignity 
in  rough  and  primitive  characters  seen  in  the  sim- 
plicity of  their  being,  and  to  fill  it  with  peril,  resource- 
fulness and  hardihood.  It  is  the  only  brave  picture  of  life 
in  the  broad  from  an  American  pen.  Scott,  in  inventing 
the  romantic  treatment  in  fiction,  was  the  leader  of  the 
historical  novel;  but  Cooper,  except  in  so  far  as  he  em- 
ployed the  form,  was  not  in  a  true  sense  an  imitator  of 
Scott;  he  did  not  create,  nor  think,  nor  feel,  in  Scott's 
way,  and  he  came  far  short  of  the  deep  human  power  of 
Scott's  genius.  He  was  not  great  in  character;  but  he 
was  great  in  adventure,  manly  spirit  and  the  atmosphere  ^ 
of  the  natural  world,  an  Odysseyan  writer,  who  caught 
the  moment  of  the  American  planting  in  vivid  and  char- 
acteristic traits. 


BRYANT 

This  same  spirit,  but  limited  to  nature  in  her  most 

/elemental  forms  and  having  the  simplest  generic  rela- 

V  tions  to  human  life,  characterizes  Bryant.    He,  too,  had 

slender  academic  training,  and  came  from  the  same  social 

origins  as  Irving  and  Cooper;  but,  owing  to  his  extraor- 


270  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

dinary  boyish  precocity,  the  family  influences  upon 
him  and  the  kind  of  home  he  was  bred  in  are  more  clearly 
seen.  He  framed  his  art  in  his  boyhood  on  the  model  of 
18th-century  verse,  and  though  he  felt  the  liberalizing 
influences  of  Wordsworth  later  there  always  remained  in 
his  verse  a  sense  of  form  that  suggests  a  severer  school 
than  that  of  his  English  contemporaries.  He  lived  the 
life  of  a  journalist  and  public  man  in  New  York,  but  the 
poet  in  him  was  a  man  apart  and  he  jealously  guarded  his 
talent  in  seclusion.  Though  he  was  at  times  abroad,  he 
remained  home-bred.  He  wrote  a  considerable  quantity 
of  verse;  but  it  is  by  a  quality  in  it  rather  than  by  its 
contents  that  his  poetry  is  recalled,  and  this  quality 
exists  most  highly  in  the  few  pieces  that  are  well  known. 
I  VTo  no  verse  is  the  phrase  "native  wood-notes  wild'^  more 
I  properly  applied.  His  poetry  gives  this  deep  impression 
of  privacy;  high,  clear,  brief  in  voice,  and  yet,  as  it  were, 
as  of  something  hidden  in  the  sky  or  grove  or  brook,  or 
as  if  the  rock  spoke,  it  is  nature  in  her  haunts;  it  is  the 
voice  of  the  peak,  the  forests,  the  cataracts,  the  smile  of 
the  blue  gentian,  the  distant  rosy  flight  of  the  water-fowl, 
—  with  no  human  element  less  simple  than  piety,  death 
or  the  secular  changes  of  time.  It  is,  too,  an  expression 
of  something  so  purely  American  that  it  seems  that  it 
must  be  as  uncomprehended  by  one  not  familiar  with  the 
scene  as  the  beauty  of  Greece  or  Italian  glows;  it  is 
poetry  locked  in  its  own  land.  This  presence  of  the  pure, 
the  pristine,  the  virginal  in  the  verse,  this  luminousness, 
spaciousness,  serenity  in  the  land,  this  immemorialness 
of  natural  things,  is  the  body  and  spirit  of  the  true  wild, 
such  as  Bryant's  eyes  had  seen  it  and  as  it  had  possessed 
his  soul.  In  no  other  American  poet  is  there  this  nearness 
to  original  awe  in  the  presence  of  nature;  nowhere  is 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  271 

nature  so  slightly  humanized,  so  cosmically  felt,  and  yet 
poetized.  Poetry  of  this  sort  must  be  small  in  amount; 
a  few  hundred  lines  contain  it  all;  but  they  alone  shrine 
the  original  grandeur,  not  so  much  of  the  American  land- 
scape, as  of  the  wild  nature  when  first  felt  in  the  primitive 
American  world. 

American  romanticism  thus  began  with  these  three 
writers,  who  gave  it  characterization  after  all  by  only  a 
few  simple  traits.  There  was  in  it  no  profound  passion 
nor  philosophy  nor  revolt;  especially  there  was  no  mor- 
bidness.; It  was  sprung  from  a  new  soil.  The  breath  of 
the  early  American  world  was  in  Bryant's  poetry;  he 
had  freed  from  the  landscape  a  Druidical  nature-wor- 
ship of  singular  purity,  simple  and  grand,  unbound  by 
any  conventional  formulas  of  thought  or  feeling  but 
deeply  spiritual.  The  new  life  of  the  land  filled  the  scene 
of  Cooper;  prairie,  forest  and  sea,  Indians,  backwoodsmen 
and  sailors,  the  human  struggle  of  all  kinds,  gave  it 
diversity  and  detail;  but  its  life  was  the  American  spirit, 
the  epic  action  of  a  people  taking  primitive  possession, 
battling  with  the  various  foes,  making  its  world.  Irving, 
more  brooding  and  reminiscent,  gave  legend  to  the  lands- 
cape, transformed  rudeness  with  humor  and  brought 
elements  of  picturesqueness  into  play;  and  in  him,  in 
whom  the  new  race  was  more  mature,  was  first  shown  that 
nostalgia  for  the  past,  which  is  everywhere  a  romantic 
trait  but  was  peculiarly  strong  under  American  condi- 
tions. He  was  consequently  more  free  in  imagination 
than  the  others,  and  first  dealt  with  other  than  American 
subjects,  emancipating  literature  from  provinciality  of 
theme,  while  the  modes  of  his  romantic  treatment,  the 
way  he  felt  about  his  subjects,  still  owed  much  to  his 
American  birth.    In  all  this  literature  by  the  three  writers 


272  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

there  was  little  complexity,  and  there  was  no  strangeness 
in  their  personalities.  Irving  was  more  genially  human; 
Cooper  more  vitally  intense;  Bryant  was  the  more  careful 
artist  in  the  severe  limits  of  his  art,  which  was  simple  and 
plain.  Simplicity  and  plainness  characterize  all  three; 
they  were,  in  truth,  simple  American  gentlemen,  of  the 
breeding  and  tastes  that  a  plain  democracy  produced  as 
its  best,  who,  giving  themselves  to  literature  for  a  career, 
developed  a  native  romanticism,  which,  however  obvious 
and  uncomplicated  with  philosophy,  passion  or  moods, 
represented  the  first  stage  of  American  life  with  freshness 
of  power,  an  element  of  ideal  loftiness  and  much  literary 
charm. 

GENERAL   PROGRESS 

Though  Irving,  Cooper  and  Bryant  were  associated 
with  New  York,  there  was  something  sporadic  in  their 
generation.  They  have  no  common  source;  they  stood 
apart;  and  their  work  neither  overlapped  nor  blended, 
but  remained  self -isolated.  None  of  them  can  be  said  to 
have  founded  a  school,  but  Irving  left  a  literary  tradi- 
tion and  Cooper  had  followers  in  the  field  of  historical 
fiction.  The  literary  product  up  to  the  middle  of  the 
century  presents  generally  from  its  early  years  the  appear- 
ance of  an  indistinguishable  mass,  as  in  colonial  days,  in 
which  neither  titles  nor  authors  are  eminent.  The  asso- 
iation  of  American  literature  with  the  periodical  press  is, 
(^perhaps,  the  most  important  trait  to  be  observed.  New 
York  and  Philadelphia  were  book-markets,  and  local 
presses  had  long  been  at  work  issuing  many  reprints. 
Magazines  in  various  degrees  of  importance  sprang  up 
in  succession  to  the  earlier  imitations  of  English  i8th 


C 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  273 

century  periodicals,  which  abounded  at  the  beginning  of 
the  century;  and  as  time  went  on  these  were  accom- 
panied by  a  host  of  annuals  of  the  English  ^'Keepsake" 
variety.  Philadelphia  was  especially  distinguished  by  an 
early  fertility  in  magazines,  which  later  reached  a  great 
circulation,  as  in  the  case  of  "Godey's"  and  ''Graham's"; 
the  ''Knickerbocker"  became  prominent  in  New  York 
from  1833,  when  it  was  founded;  Richmond  had  in  "The 
Southern  Literary  Messenger"  the  chief  patron  of  south- 
ern writers  from  1834,  and  there  were  abortive  ventures 
still  farther  south  in  Charleston.  These  various  period- 
icals and  like  publications  were  the  literary  arena,  the 
place  of  ambition  for  young  and  old,  for  known  and  un- 
known, and  there  literary  fame  and  what  little  money 
came  of  its  pursuit  were  found.  Minor  poetry  flourished 
in  it;  sketches,  tales,  essays,  every  sort  of  writing  in 
prose  multiplied  there.  The  i8th  century  was  fairly  left 
behind.  The  Philadelphian  reprint  of  Galignani's  Paris 
edition  of  Keats,  Shelley  and  Coleridge  had  brought  in 
the  new  romantic  poetry  with  wide  effect;  and  Disraeli, 
Bulwer  and,  later,  Dickens  are  felt  in  the  prose;  in  verse, 
especially  by  women,  Mrs.  Hemans  and  Mrs.  Browning 
ruled  the  moment.  The  product  was  large.  In  poetry  it 
was  displayed  on  the  most  comprehensive  scale  in  Rufus 
Wilmot  Griswold's  (181 5-1 85 7)  collections  of  American 
verse,  made  in  the  middle  of  the  century.  Mrs.  Lydia 
Sigourney  (i  791-1865),  a  prolific  writer,  and  Mrs.  Maria 
Gowan  Brooks  (i  795-1 845),  known  as  Southey's  "Maria 
del  Occidente,"  a  more  ambitious  aspirant,  the  "David- 
son sisters"  (1808-182  5:  1823-1838),  and  Alice  (1820- 
1871)  and  Phoebe  Cary  (1824-1871)  illustrate  the  work 
of  the  women;  and  Richard  Henry  Wilde  (i 789-1 847), 
George  Pope  Morris  (i  802-1 864),  Charles  Fenno  Hof- 


274  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

man  (1806-1884)  and  Willis  Gaylord  Clark  (1810-1841) 
may  serve  for  that  of  men.  In  this  verse,  and  in  the 
abundant  prose  as  well,  the  sentimentality  of  the  period 
is  strongly  marked;  it  continued  to  the  times  of  the 
Civil  War.  Two  poets  of  a  better  type,  Joseph  Rodman 
Drake  (i  795-1 820),  distinguished  by  delicacy  of  fancy, 
and  Fitz-Greene  Halleck  (i  790-1 867),  who  showed  ardor 
and  a  real  power  of  phrase,  are  remembered  from  an 
earlier  time  for  their  brotherhood  in  verse,  but  Drake 
died  young  and  Halleck  was  soon  sterilized,  so  that  the 
talents  of  both  proved  abortive.  The  characteristic  figure 
that  really  exemplifies  this  secondary  literature  at  its 
best  is  Nathaniel  Parker  Willis  (1806-186 7)  who,  though 
born  in  Portland,  Maine,  was  the  chief  litterateur  of  the 
Knickerbocker  period.  He  wrote  abundantly  in  both 
verse  and  prose,  and  was  the  first  of  the  journalist  type 
of  authors,  a  social  adventurer  with  facile  powers  of 
literary  entertainment,  a  man  of  the  town  and  immensely 
popular.  He  was  the  sentimentalist  by  profession,  and 
his  work,  transitory  as  it  proved,  was  typical  of  a  large 
share  of  the  taste,  talent  and  ambition  of  the  con- 
temporary crowd  of  writers.  Neighboring  him  in  time  and 
place  are  the  authors  of  various  stripe,  known  as  "the 
Literati,'*  whom  Poe  described  in  his  critical  papers, 
which,  in  connection  with  Griswold's  collections  mentioned 
above,  are  the  principal  current  source  of  information  con- 
cerning the  bulk  of  American  literature  in  that  period. 


POE 

This  world  of  the  magazines,  the  Literati  and  sen-* 
timentalism,  was  the  true  milieu  of  Edgar  Allan  Poe 
( 1 809-1 849).     Born  in  Boston,  his  mother  a  pleasing 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  275 

English  actress  and  his  father  a  dissipated  stage-struck 
youth  of  a  Baltimore  family,  left  an  orphan  in  childhood, 
he  was  reared  in  the  Virginian  home  of  John  Allan,  a 
merchant  of  Scottish  extraction;  he  received  there  the 
stamp  of  Southern  character.  He  was  all  his  life  char- 
acteristically a  Southerner,  with  Southern  ideals  of  char- 
acter and  conduct.  Southern  manners  towards  both  men 
and  women  and  Southern  passions.  He  showed  precocity 
in  verse,  but  made  his  real  debut  in  prose  as  editor  of 
"The  Southern  Literary  Messenger"  at  Richmond  in 
1835.  He  was  by  his  talents  committed  to  a  literary 
career,  and  being  usually  without  definite  means  of  sup- 
port he  followed  the  literary  market,  first  to  Philadelphia 
and  later  to  New  York.  He  was  continuously  associated 
with  magazines  as  editor,  reviewer  or  contributor;  they 
were  his  means  of  sustenance;  and,  whether  as  cause  or 
effect,  this  mode  of  life  fell  in  with  the  nature  of  his 
mind,  which  was  a  contemporary  mind.  He  was  perhaps 
better  acquainted  with  contemporary  work  in  literature 
than  any  of  his  associates;  he  took  his  first  cues  from 
Disraeli  and  Bulwer  and  Moore,  and  he  was  earliest  to 
recognize  Tennyson  and  Mrs.  Browning;  his  principal 
reading  was  always  in  the  magazines.  He  was,  however, 
more  than  a  man  of  literary  temperament  like  Irving 
and  Cooper;  he  was  a  child  of  genius.,^  As  in  their  case, 
there  was  something  sporadic  in  his  appearance  on  the 
scene.  He  had  no  American  origins,  but  only  American 
conditions  of  life.  In  fact  he  bore  little  relation  to  his 
period,  and  so  far  as  he  was  influenced,  it  was  for  the 
worse;  he  transcended  the  period,  essentially  in  all  his 
creative  work.  He  chose  for  a  form  of  expression  the 
sketch,  tale  or  short  story,  and  he  developed  it  in  various 
ways.    From  the  start  there  was  a  melodramatic  element 


276  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

in  him,  itself  a  Southern  trait  and  developed  by  the 
literary  influence  of  Disraeli  and  Bulwer  on  his  mind. 
f  He  took  the  tale  of  mystery  as  his  special  province;  and 
receiving  it  as  a  mystery  that  was  to  be  explained,  after 
the  recent  masters  of  it,  he  saw  its  fruitful  lines  of  de- 
velopment in  the  fact  that  science  had  succeeded  to 
superstition  as  the  source  of  wonder,  and  also  in  the  use 
of  ratiocination  as  a  mode  of  disentanglement  in  the  de- 
tective story.  Brilliant  as  his  success  was  in  these  lines, 
his  great  power  lay  in  the  tale  of  psychological  states  as 
a  mode  of  impressing  the  mind  with  the  thrill  of  terror, 
the  thrall  of  fascination,  the  sense  of  mystery.  It  is  by 
his  tales  in  these  several  sorts  that  he  won,  more  slowly 
than  Irving  or  Cooper  and  effectually  only  after  his  death, 
continental  reputation;  at  present  no  American  author 
is  so  securely  settled  in  the  recognition  of  the  world  at 
large,  and  he  owes  this,  similarly  to  Cooper,  to  the  power 
of  mystery  over  the  human  mind  universally;  that  is, 
he  owes  it  to  his  theme,  seconded  by  a  marvelous  power 
to  develop  it  by  the  methods  of  a,rt.  .  He  thus  added  new 
traits  to  American  romanticism,  but  as  in  the  case  of 
Irving's  Spanish  studies  there  is  no  American  element  in 
the  theme;  he  is  detached  from  his  local  world,  and  works 
in  the  sphere  of  universal  human  nature,  nor  in  his  treat- 
ment is  there  any  trace  of  his  American  birth.  He  is  a 
world  author  more  purely  than  any  other  American  writer. 
Though  it  is  on  his  tales  that  his  continental  reputation 
necessarily  rests,  his  temperament  is  more  subtly  ex- 
pressed in  his  verse,  in  which  that  jond  of  which  his  tales 
are  the  logical  and  intelligible  growth  gives  out  images  and 
rhythms,  the  issue  of  morbid  states,  which  affect  the  mind 
rather  as  a  form  of  music  than  of  thought.  Emotion 
was,  in  art,  his  constant  aim,  though  it  might  be  only 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  277 

so  simple  a  thing  as  the  emotion  of  color  as  in  his  land- 
scape studies;  and  in  his  verse,  by  an  unconscious  in- 
tegration and  flow  of  elements  within  him  it  must  be 
thought,  he  obtained  emotional  effects  by  images  which 
have  no  intellectual  value,  and  which  float  in  rhythms  so 
as  to  act  musically  on  the  mind  and  arouse  pure  moods  of 
feeling  absolutely  free  of  any  other  contents.  Such  poems 
must  be  an  enigma  to  most  men,  but  others  are  accessible 
to  them,  and  derive  from  them  an  original  and  unique 
pleasure;  they  belong  outside  of  the  intellectual  sphere. 
It  is  by  virtue  of  this  musical  quality  and  immediacy 
that  his  poetry  is  characterized  by  genius;  in  proportion 
as  it  has  meaning  of  an  intelligible  sort  it  begins  to  fade 
and  lower;  so  far  as  ^Xenore"  and  ^^Annie"  and  "Annabel 
Lee"  are  human,  they  are  feeble  ghosts  of  that  senti- 
mentality which  was  so  rife  in  Poe's  time  and  so  maudlin 
in  his  own  personal  relations;  and  except  for  a  half-dozen 
pieces,  in  which  his  quality  of  rhythmical  fascination  is 
supreme,  his  verse  as  a  whole  is  inferior  to  the  point  of 
being  commonplace.  Small  as  the  quantity  of  his  true 
verse  is,  it  more  sustains  his  peculiar  genius  in  American 
eyes  than  does  his  prose;  and  this  is  because  it  is  so 
unique.  He  stands  absolutely  alone  as  a  poet  with  none 
like  him;  in  his  tales,  as  an  artist,  he  is  hardly  less 
solitary,  but  he  has  some  ties  of  connection  or  likeness 
with  the  other  masters  of  mystery.  Poe  lived  in  poverty 
and  died  in  misery;  but!  without  him  romanticism  in 
America  would  lose  its  most  romantic  figure,  and  Amer- 
ican literature  the  artist  who,  most  of  all  its  writers,  had 
the  passion  of  genius  for  its  work.. 
/  Poe  left  even  less  trace  of  himself  in  the  work  of  others 
^than  did  Irving,  Cooper  and  Bryant.  He  stands  in  suc- 
cession to  them,  and  closed  the  period  so  far  as  it  con- 


278  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

tributed  to  American  romanticism  anything  distinguisned, 
original  or  permanent.  The  ways  already  opened  had, 
however,  been  trod,  and  most  notably  in  fiction.  The 
treatment  of  manners  and  customs,  essentially  in  Irving's 
vein,  was  pleasingly  cultivated  in  Maryland  by  John 
Pendleton  Kennedy  (i  795-1 870)  in  ''Swallow  Barn" 
(1832)  and  similar  tales  of  Old  Dominion  life.  In  Vir- 
ginia, Beverly  Tucker  (i  784-1 851)  in  "The  Partisan 
Leader"  (1836),  noticeable  for  its  prophecy  of  secession, 
and  John  Esten  Cooke  (i  830-1 886)  in  "The  Virginia 
Comedians"  (1854),  also  won  a  passing  reputation. 
The  champion  in  the  South,  however,  was  William  Gil- 
more  Simms  (i 806-1 870),  born  in  Charleston,  a  volu- 
minous writer  of  both  prose  and  verse,  who  undertook  to 
depict,  on  the  same  scale  as  Cooper  and  in  his  manner, 
the  settlement  of  the  Southern  territory  and  its  Indian 
and  revolutionary  history;  but  of  his  many  novels,  of 
which  the  characteristic  examples  are  "The  Yemassee" 
(1835),  "The  Partisan"  (1835)  and  "Beauchampe" 
(1842),  none  attained  literary  distinction.  The  sea- 
novel  was  developed  by  Herman  Melville  (181 9-1 891) 
in  "Typee"  (1846)  and  its  successors,  but  these  tales,  in 
spite  of  their  being  highly  commended  by  lovers  of  ad- 
venture, have  taken  no  more  hold  than  the  work  of 
Simms.  Single  novels  of  wide  popularity  appeared  from 
time  to  time,  of  which  a  typical  instance  was  "The  Wide. 
Wide  World"  (1850)  by  Susan  Warner  (1819-1885). 
The  grade  of  excellence  was  best  illustrated,  perhaps,  for 
the  best  current  fiction  which  was  not  to  be  incorporated 
in  literature,  by  the  novels  of  Catharine  Maria  Sedgwick 
( 1 789-1 867),  of  a  western  Massachusetts  family,  in 
"Hope  Leslie"  (1827)  and  its  successors.  The  distinct 
Knickerbocker  strain  was  best  preserved  by  James  Kirke 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  279 

Paulding  (i 778-1860)  among  the  direct  imitators  of 
Irving;  but  the  better  part  of  the  Irving  tradition,  its 
sentiment,  social  grace  and  literary  flavor,  was  not  notice- 
able until  it  awoke  in  George  William  Curtis  (1824- 
1892),  born  a  New  Englander  but,  like  Bryant,  a  journal- 
ist and  public  man  of  New  York,  whose  novels,  notes  of 
travel  and  casual  brief  social  essays  brought  that  urbane 
style  to  an  end,  as  in  Donald  Grant  Mitchell  (1822-1908) 
the  school  of  sentiment,  descended  from  the  same  source, 
died  not  unbecomingly  in  the  "Reveries  of  a  Bachelor" 
(1850)  and  "Dream  Life"  (1851).  Two  poets,  just  sub- 
sequent to  Poe,  George  Henry  Boker  (i  823-1 890)  and 
Thomas  Buchanan  Read  (182  2-1 8 72),  won  a  certain  dis- 
tinction, the  former  especially  in  the  drama,  in  the  Phila- 
delphia group.  The  single  popular  songs,  "The  Star- 
Spangled  Banner"  (1813),  by  Francis  Scott  Key  (1779- 
1843)  o^  Maryland,  "America"  (1832),  by  Samuel  Fran- 
cis Smith  ( 1 808-1 895)  of  Massachusetts,  and  "Home, 
Sweet  Home"  (1823),  by  John  Howard  Payne  (1792- 
1852)  of  New  York,  may  also  be  appropriately  recorded 
here.  The  last  distinct  literary  personality  to  emerge  from 
the  miscellany  of  talent  in  the  middle  of  the  century,  in  the 
middle  Atlantic  states,  was  James  Bayard  Taylor  (1825- 
1878),  who,  characteristically  a  journalist,  gained  repu- 
tation by  his  travels,  poems  and  novels,  but  in  spite  of 
brilliant  versatility  and  a  high  ambition  failed  to  obtain 
permanent  distinction.  His  translation  of  "Faust"  (1870) 
is  his  chief  title  to  remembrance;  but  the  later  cultiva- 
tion of  the  oriental  motive  in  American  lyrical  poetry 
owes  something  to  his  example. 


28o  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

NEW  ENGLAND  SCHOLARSHIP 

In  New  England,  which  succeeded  to  New  York  as 
the  chief  source  of  literature  of  high  distinction,  the  prog- 
ress of  culture  in  the  post-Revolutionary  period  was  as 
normal  and  gradual  as  elsewhere  in  the  country;  there 
was  no  violence  of  development,  no  sudden  break,  but  the 
growth  of  knowledge  and  taste  went  slowly  on  in  con- 
junction with  the  softening  of  the  Puritan  foundation 
of  thought,  belief  and  practice.    What  most  distinguished 
Uiterature  in  New  England  from  that  to  the  west  and 
[south  was  its  connection  with  religion  and  scholarship, 
neither  of  which  elements  was  strong  in  the  literature  that 
has  been  described.    The  neighborhood  of  Harvard  Col- 
lege to  Boston  was  a  powerful  influence  in  the  field  of 
knowledge  and  critical  culture.    The  most  significant  fact 
in  respect  to  scholarship,  however,  was  the  residence 
abroad  of  George  Ticknor  (1791-1871),  author  of  "The 
History   of    Spanish    Literature"    (1849),    of    Edward 
Everett  (1794-1865),  the  orator,  and  of  George  Bancroft 
(1800-1891),  author  of  the  "History  of  the  United  States" 
( 1 834-1 874),  who  as  young  men  brought  back  new  ideals 
of  learning.    The  social  connection  of  Boston,  not  only 
with  England  but  with  the  Continent,  was  more  constant, 
\  varied  and  intimate  than  fell  to  the  fortune  of  any  other 
J  city,  and  owing  to  the  serious  temper  of  the  community 
*  the  intellectual  commerce  with  the  outer  world  through 
books  was  more  profound.     Coleridge  was  early  deeply 
influential  on  the  thought  of  the  cultivated  class,  and  to 
him  Carlyle,  who  found  his  first  sincere  welcome  and  ef- 
fectual power  there,  succeeded.    The  influence  of  both 
combined  to  introduce,  and  to  secure  attention  for,  Ger- 
man writers.     Translation,  as  time  went  on,  followed, 


/ 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  281 

and  German  thought  was  also  further  sustained  and  ad- 
vanced in  the  community  by  Frederick  Henry  Hedge 
(1805-1890),  a  philosophical  theologian,  who  conducted 
a  propaganda  of  German  ideas.  The  activity  of  the  group 
about  him  is  significantly  marked  by  the  issue  of  the  series 
of  "Specimens  of  Foreign  Standard  Literature"  (1838), 
edited  by  George  Ripley  (i 802-1 880),  the  critic,  which 
was  the  first  of  its  kind  in  America.  French  ideas,  as 
time  went  on,  were  also  current,  and  the  field  of  research 
extended  to  the  Orient,  the  writings  of  which  were  brought 
forward  especially  in  connection  with  the  Transcenden- 
tal Movement  to  which  all  these  foreign  studies  con- 
tributed. In  New  England,  in  other  words,  a  close,] 
serious  and  vital  connection  was  made,  for  the  first  time,/ 
with  the  philosophic  thought  of  the  world  and  with  its 
tradition  even  in  the  remote  past.  Unitarianism,  which 
was  the  form  in  which  the  old  Puritanism  dissolved  in 
the  cultivated  class,  came  in  with  the  beginning  of  the 
century,  and  found  its  representatives  in  the  gentle  char- 
acter, refined  inteligence  and  liberal  humanity  of  William 
Ellery  Channing  (i  780-1 842),  who  has  remained  its  chief 
apostle.  It  was  the  expression  of  a  moral  maturing  and 
intellectual  enlightenment  that  took  place  with  as  little 
disturbance  as  ever  marked  religious  evolution  in  any 
community.  The  people  at  large  remained  evangelical, 
but  they  also  felt  in  a  less  degree  the  softening  and  liberal- 
izing tendency;  nevertheless  it  was  mainly  in  the  field  of) 
Unitarianism  that  literature  flourished,  as  was  natural,  I 
and  Transcendentalism  was  a  phenomenon  that  grew  out  I 
of  Unitarianism,  being  indeed  the  excess  of  the  movement ' 
of  enlightenment  and  the  extreme  limit  of  intuitionalism, 
individualism  and  private  judgment.  These  two  factors, 
religion  and  scholarship,  gave  to  New  England  literature 


282  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

its  serious  stamp  and  academic  quality;  but  the  prepar- 
atory stage  being  longer,  it  was  slower  to  emerge  than 
the  literature  of  the  rest  of  the  country. 

The  first  stirrings  of  romanticism  in  New  England 
were  felt,  as  in  the  country  to  the  south,  by  men  of  literary 
temperament  in  a  sympathetic  enjoyment  and  feeble 
imitation  of  the  contemporary  English  romantic  school 
of  fiction  exemplified  by  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  Lewis  and  God- 
win. Washington  Allston  ( 1 779-1 843 ) ,  the  painter,  born 
in  South  Carolina  but  by  education  and  adoption  a  citizen 
of  Cambridge,  showed  the  taste  in  ^'Monaldi"  (1841), 
and  Richard  Henry  Dana  (i 787-1879)  in  'Taul  Felton 
(1833) ;  in  his  poem  of  the  same  date,  '^The  Buccaneer," 
the  pseudo-Byronic  element,  which  belongs  to  the  con- 
ception of  character  and  passion  in  this  school  of  fiction, 
appears.  These  elder  writers  illustrate  rather  the  stage 
of  imaginative  culture  at  the  period,  and  show  by  their 
other  works  also  —  Allston  by  his  poems  "The  Sylphs  of 
the  Seasons"  (1813),  and  Dana  by  his  abortive  periodical 
"The  Idle  Man"  (182 1),  issued  at  New  York  —  their 
essential  sympathy  with  the  literary  conditions  reigning 
before  the  time  of  Irving.  They  both  were  post  Revolu- 
tionary, and  advanced  American  culture  in  other  fields 
rather  than  imagination,  Allston  in  art  and  Dana  in 
criticism,  as  editor  of  "The  North  American  Review," 
which  was  founded  in  181 5,  and  was  long  the  chief  organ 
of  serious  thought  and  critical  learning,  influential  in 
the  dissemination  of  ideas  and  in  the  maintenance  of  the 
intellectual  life.  The  influence  of  their  personality  in 
the  community,  like  that  of  Channing,  with  whom  they 
were  closely  connected,  was  of  more  importance  than  any 
of  their  works. 


/ 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  283 

EMERSON:    HAWTHORNE:    LONGFELLOW 

The  definite  moment  of  the  appearance  of  New  Eng- 
land in  literature  in  the  true  sense  was  marked  by  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson's  (i  803-1 882)  "Nature"  (1836), 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  (i 804-1 864)  'Twice-Told  Tales" 
(1837)  and  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow's  (i 807-1 882) 
"Voices  of  the  Night"  (1839).  Of  this  group  of  men 
Longfellow  is  the  most  national  figure,  and  from  the  point 
of  view  of  literary  history  the  most  significant  by  virtue 
of  what  he  contributed  to  American  romanticism  in  the 
large.  He  felt  the  conscious  desire  of  the  people  for  an 
American  literature,  and  he  obeyed  it  in  the  choice  of  his 
subjects.  He  took  national  themes,  and  his  work  is  in 
this  respect  the  counterpart  in  poetry  to  that  of  Cooper 
in  prose.  In  "Hiawatha"  (1855)  he  poetized  the  Indian 
life;  and,  though  the  scene  and  figures  of  the  poem  are 
no  more  localized  than  the  happy  hunting-grounds,  the 
ideal  of  the  life  of  the  aborigines  in  the  wilderness  is  given 
with  freshness  and  primitive  charm  and  with  effect  on 
the  imagination.  It  is  the  sole  survivor  of  many  poetic 
attempts  to  naturalize  the  Indian  in  literature,  and  will 
remain  the  classic  Indian  poem.  In  "Evangeline"  (1847), 
"The  Courtship  of  Miles  Standish"  (1858)  and  "The 
New  England  Tragedies"  (1868),  he  depicted  colonial  life. 
As  he  thus  embodied  tradition  in  one  portion  of  his  work, 
he  rendered  national  character  in  another,  and 
with  more  spontaneity,  in  those  domestic  poems  of 
childhood  and  the  affections,  simple  moods  of  the  heart 
in  the  common  lot,  which  most  endeared  him  as  the  poet 
of  the  household.  These  are  American  poems  as  truly 
as  his  historical  verse,  though  they  are  also  universal  for 
the  English  race.    In  another  large  portion  of  his  work 


284  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

he  brought  back  from  the  romantic  tradition  of  Europe, 
after  Irving^s  manner,  motives  which  he  treated  for  their 
pure  poetic  quality,  detached  from  anything  American, 
and  he  also  translated  much  foreign  verse  from  the  north 
and  south  of  Europe,  including  Dante's  ^'Divine  Comedy" 
(1867).  He  has,  more  than  any  other  single  writer,  re- 
united America  with  the  poetic  past  of  Europe,  par- 
ticularly in  its  romance.  The  same  serenity  of  disposi- 
tion that  marked  Irving  and  Bryant  characterized  his 
life;  and  his  art,  more  varied  than  Bryant's  or  Irving's, 
has  the  same  refinement,  being  simple  and  so  limpid  as 
to  deceive  the  reader  into  an  oblivion  of  its  quality  and 
sometimes  into  an  unwitting  disparagement  of  what  seems 
so  plain  and  natural  as  to  be  commonplace.  In  Long- 
fellow, as  in  Irving,  one  is  struck  by  that  quietude,  which 
is  so  prevailing  a  characteristic  of  American  literature, 
and  which  proceeds  from  its  steady  and  even  flow  from 
sources  that  never  knew  any  disturbances  or  perturbation. 
The  life,  the  art,  the  moods  are  all  calm;  deep  passion  is 
absent. 

Hawthorne  was  endowed  with  a  soul  of  more  intense 
brooding,  but  he  remained  within  the  circle  of  this  peace. 
He  developed  in  solitude  exquisite  grace  of  language,  and 
in  other  respects  was  an  artist,  the  mate  of  Poe  in  the 
tale  and  exceeding  Poe  in  significance  since  he  used  sym- 
bolism for  effects  of  truth.  He,  like  Longfellow,  em- 
bodied the  national  tradition,  in  this  case  the  Puritan 
past;  but  he  seized  the  subject,  not  in  its  historical  aspects 
and  diversity  of  character  and  event,  but  psychologically 
in  its  moral  passion  in  ^'The  Scarlet  Letter"  (1850),  and 
less  abstractly,  more  picturesquely,  more  humanly,  in  its 
blood  tradition,  in  "The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables" 
(1851).  In  his  earlier  work,  as  an  artist,  he  shows  the 
paucity  of  the  materials  in  the  environment,  especially  in 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  285 

his  tales;  but  when  his  residence  in  Italy  and  England 
gave  into  his  hands  larger  opportunity,  he  did  not  succeed 
so  well  in  welding  Italy  with  America  in  "The  Marble 
Faun''  (i860),  or  England  with  America  in  his  experi- 
mental attempts  at  the  work  which  he  left  uncompleted, 
as  he  had  done  in  the  Puritan  romances.  He  had,  however, 
added  a  new  domain  to  American  romanticism;  and,  most 
of  all  these  writers,  he  blended  moral  truth  with  fiction;  he 
indeed  spiritualized  romance,  and  without  loss  of  human 
reality,  —  a  rare  thing  in  any  literature.  Both  Longfellow 
and  Hawthorne  were  happy  in  reconciling  their  art  with 
their  country:  both,  not  less  than  Poe,  were  universal 
artists,  but  they  incorporated  the  national  past  in  their 
art  and  were  thereby  more  profoundly  American. 

Emerson,  whose  work  lay  in  the  religious  sphere,  not 
unlike  Jonathan  Edwards  at  an  earlier  time  of  climax 
but  in  a  different  way,  marked  the  issue  of  Puritanism 
in  pure  idealism,  and  was  more  contemporaneously  asso- 
ciated with  the  life  in  the  times  than  were  the  purely 
imaginative  writers.  He  was  the  central  figure  of  Tran- 
scendentalism, and  apart  from  his  specific  teachings  stood 
for  the  American  spirit,  disengaged  from  authority,  in- 
dependent, personal,  responsible  only  to  himself.  He 
reached  a  revolutionary  extreme,  but  he  had  not  arrived 
at  it  by  revolutionary  means;  without  storm  or  stress, 
with  characteristic  peacefulness,  he  came  to  the  great 
denials,  and  without  much  concerning  himself  with  them 
turned  to  his  own  affirmations  of  spiritual  reality,  methods 
of  life  and  personal  results.  Serenity  was  his  peculiar 
trait;  amid  all  the  agitation  about  him  he  was  entirely 
unmoved,  lived  calmly  and  wrote  with  placid  power,  con- 
centrating into  the  slowly  wrought  sentences  of  his 
"Essays"  (i 841-187 5)  the  spiritual  essence  and  moral 
metal  of  a  life  lived  to  God,  to  himself  and  to  his  fellow- 


286  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

men.  He,  more  than  any  other  single  writer,  reunited 
American  thought  with  the  philosophy  of  the  world ;  more 
than  all  others,  he  opened  the  ways  of  liberalism,  wher- 
ever they  may  lead.  He  was  an  emancipator  of  the  mind. 
In  his  'Toems"  (i 847-1 867),  though  the  abstract  and 
the  concrete  often  find  themselves  awkward  mates,  his 
philosophic  ideas  are  put  forth  under  forms  of  imagination 
and  his  personal  life  is  expressed  with  nobility;  his  poetic 
originality,  though  so  different  in  kind,  is  as  unique  as 
Poe's,  and  reaches  a  height  of  imaginative  faculty  not 
elsewhere  found  in  American  verse.  His  poetry  belongs 
more  peculiarly  to  universal  art,  so  pure  in  general  is  its 
philosophic  content  and  so  free  from  any  temporal  trait 
is  the  style;  but  it  is  as  distinguished  for  the  laconic  ex- 
pression of  American  ideas,  minted  with  one  blow,  as 
his  prose  is  for  the  constant  breathing  of  the  American 
spirit.  It  is  the  less  possible  to  define  the  American  traits 
in  Emerson,  because  they  constituted  the  man.  He 
was  as  purely  an  American  type  as  Lincoln.  The  grain 
of  the  man  is  in  his  work  also;  and  the  best  that  his 
prose  and  verse  contain  is  his  personal  force.  In  him 
alone  is  genius  felt  as  power;  in  the  others  it  impresses  one 
primarily  as  culture,  modes  of  artistic  faculty,  phases  of 
temperament.  In  this,  too,  he  brings  to  mind  Jonathan 
Edwards,  the  other  climax  of  the  religious  spirit  in  New 
England;  in  Edwards  it  was  intellectual  power,  in  Emer- 
son it  was  moral  power;  in  both  it  was  indigenous,  power 
springing  from  what  was  most  profound  in  the  historic 
life  of  the  community. 

whittier:  holmes:  lowell 

Three  other  names,  John  Greenleaf  Whittier  (1807- 
1892),    Oliver    Wendell    Holmes    (1809-1894),    James 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  287 

Russell  Lowell  (1819-1891),  complete  the  group  of  the 
greatest  writers  of  New  England.  Holmes  was  a  more 
/  local  figure,  by  his  humour  and  wit  and  his  mental  acute- 
ness  a  Yankee  and  having  the  flavor  of  race,  but  neither 
in  his  verse  nor  his  novels  reaching  a  high  degree  of  excel- 
lence and  best  known  by  ^'The  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast 
Table"  (1858),  which  is  the  Yankee  prose  classic.  His 
contemporary  reputation  was  largely  social  and  owed 
much  to  the  length  of  his  life,  but  his  actual  hold  on  litera- 
ture already  seems  slight  and  his  work  of  little  permanent 
value.  Whittier  stands  somewhat  apart  as  the  poet  of  the 
soil  and  also  because  of  his  Quakerism;  he  was  first 
eminent  as  the  poet  of  the  anti-slavery  movement,  to 
which  he  contributed  much  stirring  verse,  and  later  se- 
cured a  broader  fame  by  "Snowbound"  (1866)  and  his 
religious  poems  of  simple  piety,  welcome  to  every  faith; 
he  was  also  a  balladist  of  local  legends.  In  general  he 
is  the  voice  of  the  plain  people  without  the  medium  of 
academic  culture,  and  his  verse  though  of  low  flight  is 
near  to  their  life  and  faith.  Lowell  first  won  distinction 
by  ''The  Biglow  Papers"  (1848),  which  with  the  second 
series  (1866)  is  the  Yankee  classic  in  verse,  and  is  second 
only  to  his  patriotic  odes  in  maintaining  his 
poetic  reputation;  his  other  verse,  variously  romantic 
in  theme  and  feeling,  and  latterly  more  kindred  to  Eng- 
lish classic  style,  shows  little  originality  and  was  never 
popularly  received;  it  is  rather  the  fruit  of  great  talent 
working  in  close  literary  sympathy  with  other  poets  whom 
from  time  to  time  he  valued.  His  prose  consists  in  the 
main  of  literary  studies  in  criticism,  a  field  in  which  he 
held  the  first  rank.  Together  with  Holmes  and  Whittier 
he  gives  greater  body,  diversity  and  illustration  to  the 
literature  of  New  England;  but  in  the  work  of  none  of 


288  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

these  is  there  the  initiative  or  the  presence  of  single 
genius  that  characterize  Emerson,  Hawthorne  and  Long- 
fellow. Lowell  was  a  scholar  with  academic  ties,  a  patriot 
above  party,  master  of  prose  and  verse  highly  developed 
and  finished,  and  at  times  of  a  lofty  strain  owing  to  his 
moral  enthusiasm;  Whittier  was  a  Quaker  priest, 
vigorous  in  a  great  cause  of  humanity,  with  fluent  power 
to  express  in  poetry  the  life  of  the  farm,  the  roadside 
and  the  legends  that  were  like  folklore  in  the  memory 
of  the  settlement;  Holmes  was  a  town  wit  and  master 
of  occasional  verse,  with  notes  here  and  there  of  a 
higher  strain  in  single  rare  poems. 


TRANSCENDENTALISM 

The  secondary  literature  that  accompanied  the  work  of 
these  writers  was  abundant.  It  was  largely  the  product 
of  Transcendentalism  and  much  of  it  gathered  about 
Emerson.  In  "The  Dial"  (1840),  the  organ  of  Tran- 
scendentalism, he  introduced  to  the  public  his  young 
friend,  Henry  David  Thoreau  (181 7-1862),  author  of 
"Walden"  (1854)  and  the  father  of  the  nature-writers, 
who  as  a  hermit-type  has  had  some  European  vogue  and 
shows  an  increasing  hold  as  an  exception  among  men, 
but  whose  work  has  little  literary  distinction;  and  to- 
gether with  him,  his  companion,  William  Ellery  Channing 
(1818-1901),  a  poet  who  has  significance  only  in  the 
transcenden talis t  group.  With  them  should  be  named 
Emerson's  coeval,  Amos  Bronson  Alcott  (i  799-1 888),  the 
patriarch  of  the  so-called  Concord  philosophers,  better 
esteemed  for  his  powers  of  monologue  than  as  a  writer 
in  either  prose  or  verse.  Emerson's  associate-editor  in 
"The   Dial"   was    Sarah    Margaret   Fuller,   afterwards 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  289 

Marchioness  d'Ossoli  (i 810-1850),  a  woman  of  extraor- 
dinary qualities  and  much  usefulness,  who  is  best  re- 
membered by  her  ^Woman  in  the  Nineteenth  Century" 
(1844),  but  contributed  no  permanent  work  to  literature. 
She  was  a  leading  figure  at  Brook  Farm,  the  socialistic 
community  founded  by  members  of  the  group,  and  es- 
pecially by  Ripley,  who  like  her  afterwards  emigrated  to 
New  York  and  together  with  her  began  a  distinguished 
critical  career  in  connection  with  "The  New  York 
Tribune."  Transcendentalism  produced  also  its  peculiar 
poet  in  Jones  Very  (1813-1881),  whose  "Poems"  (1839) 
have  original  quality  though  slight  merit,  and  its  novelist 
in  Sylvester  Judd  (i 813-1853),  whose  "Margaret"  (1845) 
is  a  unique  work  in  American  fiction.  Other  transcen- 
dentalist  poets  were  Christopher  Pearse  Cranch  (1813- 
1892),  and  Charles  Timothy  Brooks  (1813-1883),  who 
translated  "Faust"  (1856),  besides  a  score  of  minor 
names.  Outside  of  this  group  Thomas  William  Parsons 
(181 9-1 892),  who  translated  Dante's  "Inferno"  (1843), 
was  a  poet  of  greater  distinction,  but  his  product  was 
slight.  The  prose  of  the  movement,  though  abundant, 
yielded  nothing  that  is  remembered. 


history:  oratory:  fiction:  scholarship 

The  literary  life  of  Boston  was,  however,  by  no  means 
confined  within  this  circle  of  thought.  It  was  most  dis- 
tinguished in  the  field  of  history,  where  indeed  the  writers 
rivalled  the  imaginative  authors  in  public  fame.  They 
were,  besides  George  Bancroft  already  mentioned,  John 
Gorham  Palfrey  (i  796-1881),  author  of  "The  History 
of  New  England"  (1858),  Vl^illiam  Hickling  Prescott 
( 1 796-1859),   whose   field   was   Spanish   and   Spanish- 


290  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

American  history,  John  Lothrop  Motley  (1814-1877), 
whose  attention  was  given  to  Dutch  history,  and  Jared 
Sparks  (i  789-1 866),  whose  work  lay  in  biography.  In 
the  writings  of  Prescott  and  Motley  the  romanticism  of 
the  period  is  clearly  felt,  and  they  attained  the  highest 
distinction  in  the  literary  school  of  history  of  the  period. 
Oratory  also  flourished  in  Daniel  Webster  (i  782-1852), 
Edward  Everett  (i  794-1 865),  Rufus  Choate  (1799- 
1859),  Wendell  Phillips  (1811-1884),  Charles  Sumner 
(1811-1874),  and  Robert  Charles  Winthrop  (1809- 
1894),  the  last  survivor  of  a  long  line  of  fiery  or  classic 
oratory  in  which  New  England  was  especially  distin- 
guished and  had  rivalry  only  from  Henry  Clay  (1777- 
1852)  of  Virginia,  and  John  Caldwell  Calhoun  (1782- 
1850)  of  South  Carolina.  The  church  also  introduced  two 
powerful  speakers  in  Theodore  Parker  (181 0-18 60),  the 
protagonist  of  the  liberals  in  Boston,  and  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  (i 813-1887),  who  sustained  a  liberal  form  of 
New  England  Congregationalism  in  Brooklyn,  New  York, 
where  he  made  Plymouth  Church  a  national  pulpit.  The 
single  memorable  novel  of  the  period  was  Mrs.  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe's  (1811-1896)  "Uncle  Tom's  Cabin" 
(1852),  which  had  a  world-wide  vogue;  it  is  the  chief 
contribution  of  the  anti-slavery  movement  to  American 
literature  and  stands  for  plantation  life  in  the  old  South. 
Another  female  writer,  Mrs.  Lydia  Maria  Child  (1802- 
1880),  remembered  by  her  "Philothea"  (1836),  deserves 
mention  in  the  line  of  notable  American  women  who 
served  their  generation  in  literary  ways  and  by  devotion 
to  public  causes.  Criticism  was  served  excellently  by 
Edwin  Percy  Whipple  (1819-1885),  and  less  eminently 
by  Henry  Theodore  Tuckerman  (1813-1871),  who  emi- 
grated to  New  York;  but  scholarship  in  general  flourished 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  291 

under  the  protection  of  Harvard  College,  where  Ticknor, 
Longfellow  and  Lowell  maintained  a  high  ideal  of  literary 
knowledge  and  judgment  in  the  chair  they  successively 
filled,  and  were  accompanied  in  English  by  Francis  James 
Child  (182 5-1 896),  whose  "English  and  Scottish  Bal- 
lads,'' first  issued  in  1858,  was  brought  to  its  final  and 
monumental  form  in  1892.  Cornelius  Conway  Felton 
( 1 807-1 862),  president  of  Harvard  College,  stood  for 
Greek  culture,  but  the  classical  influence  was  little  in  evi- 
dence. Elsewhere  in  New  England  George  Perkins  Marsh 
( 1 801-1882)  of  Vermont,  long  minister  to  Italy,  and  Wil- 
liam Dwight  Whitney  (182  7-1894)  of  Yale,  were  linguis- 
tic scholars  of  high  distinction.  The  development  of  the 
colleges  into  universities  was  already  prophesied  in  the 
presence  and  work  of  these  men.  Outside  of  New  Eng- 
land scholarship  had  been  illustrated  in  New  York  by 
Charles  Anthon  (i 797-1867),  the  classical  editor,  by  the 
Duyckincks,  Evert  Augustus  (181 6- 1878)  and  George 
Long  (182 3-1 863),  editors  of  the  "Cyclopaedia  of  Amer- 
ican Literature"  (1855),  ^^^  by  Giulian  Crommelin  Ver- 
planck  ( 1 786-1870),  editor  of  "Shakespeare." 


CHARACTERISTICS   OF   NEW   ENGLAND  LITERATURE 

New  England  thus,  standing  somewhat  apart,  produced 
a  characteristic  literature,  more  deeply  rooted  in  the 
community  than  was  the  case  elsewhere;  and  this  litera- 
ture, blending  with  what  was  produced  to  the  South  and 
West,  became  a  predominant  share  of  what  has  been  na- 
tionally accepted  as  standard  American  literature.  It  is 
also  the  more  profound  and  scholarly  share;  and  if 
quantity  as  well  as  quality  be  counted,  and,  as  is  proper, 
Bryant  be  included  as  the  product  of  Puritan  culture,  it 


292  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

is  the  more  artistic  share.  American  standard  literature, 
so  constituted,  belongs  to  romanticism,  and  is  a  phase  of 
the  romanticism  which  was  then  the  general  mood  of 
literature;  but  it  is  a  native  product,  with  traits  of  its 
own  and  inward  development  from  local  conditions,  not 
only  apparent  by  its  theme,  but  by  its  distinct  evolution. 
Though  it  owed  much  to  contact  with  Europe  through  its 
traveled  scholars  and  its  intellectual  commerce  by  means 
of  translations  and  imported  books,  and  often  dealt  with 
matter  detached  from  America  both  in  prose  and  poetry, 
it  was  essentially  self-contained.  It  was,  in  a  marked 
way,  free  from  the  passions  whose  source  was  the  French 
Revolution  and  its  after- throes  from  1789  to  1848;  it  is 
by  this  fact  that  it  differs  most  from  European  romanti- 
cism. Just  as  the  Puritan  Rebellion  in  England  left  the 
colonies  untouched  to  their  own  development,  the  political 
revolutions  in  Europe  left  the  new  nation  unaffected  to  its 
normal  evolution.  There  was  never  any  revolution,  in 
the  French  sense,  in  America,  whether  social,  political, 
religious  or  literary;  its  great  historical  changes,  such 
as  the  termination  of  English  rule,  the  passing  away  of 
Puritanism,  the  abolition  of  slavery  with  the  consequent 
destruction  of  the  old  South,  were  in  a  true  sense  con- 
servative changes,  normal  phases  of  new  life.  In  litera- 
ture this  state  of  things  is  reflected  in  the  absence  in  it 
of  any  disturbance,  its  serenity  of  mood,  its  air  of  quiet 
studies.  It  is  shown  especially  in  its  lack  of  passion. 
The  only  ardors  displayed  by  its  writers  are  moral,  patri- 
otic or  religious,  and  in  none  of  them  is  there  any  sense  of 
conflict.  The  life  which  they  knew  was  wholesome,  regu- 
lar,  still  free  from  urban  corruption,  the  experience  of  a 
i  plain,  prosperous  and  law-abiding  people.  None  of  these 
writers,  though  like  Hawthorne  they  might  deal  with  sin 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEV/  293 

or  like  Poe  with  horror  and  a  lover^s  despair  at  death, 
struck  any  tragic  note.  No  tragedy  was  written,  no  love- 
poetry,  no  novel  of  passion.  No  literature  is  so  maiden- 
pure.  It  is  by  refinement  rather  than  power  that  it  is 
most  distinguished,  by  taste  and  cultivation,  by  con- 
scientiousness in  art,  in  poetic  and  stylistic  craft;  it  is 
romance  retrospectively  seen  in  the  national  past,  or  con- 
jured out  of  foreign  lands  by  reminiscent  imagination,  or 
symbolically  created  out  of  fantasy;  and  this  is  supple- 
mented by  poetry  of  the  domestic  affections,  the  simple 
sorrows,  all  ^'that  has  been  and  may  be  again''  in  daily 
human  lives,  and  by  prose  similarly  related  to  a  well- 
ordered  life.  If  it  is  undistinguished  by  any  work  of 
supreme  genius,  it  reflects  broadly  and  happily  and  in 
enduring  forms  the  national  traditions  and  character  of 
the  land  in  its  dawning  century. 

The  original  impulse  of  this  literature  had  spent  its 
force  by  1861  —  that  is,  before  the  Civil  War.  The 
greater  writers  had,  in  general,  already  done  their  char- 
acteristic work,  and  though  the  survivors  continued  to 
produce  till  toward  the  close  of  the  century,  their  works 
contained  no  new  elements  and  were  at  most  mellow 
fruits  of  age.  The  war  itself,  like  the  Revolution,  left 
little  trace  in  literature  beyond  a  few  popular  songs  and 
those  occasional  poems  which  the  older  poets  wrote  in  the 
course  of  the  conflict.  Their  attitude  toward  it  and  (with 
the  exception  of  Whittier  and  Lowell)  toward  the  anti- 
slavery  movement  which  led  up  to  it  was  rather  that  of 
citizens  than  of  poets,  though  in  the  verse  of  Longfellow 
and  Emerson  there  is  the  noble  stamp  of  the  hour,  the  im- 
press of  liberty,  bravery  and  sorrow.  Lowell  is  the  excep- 
tion; he  found  in  the  ^'Commemoration  Ode"  (1865)  his 
loftiest  subject  and  most  enduring  fame.    The  work  began 


294  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

to  fall  into  new  hands,  and  a  literature  since  the  war  grew 
up,  which  was,  however,  especially  in  poetry,  a  continua- 
tion of  romanticism  and  contained  its  declining  force.  It 
was  contributed  to  from  all  parts  of  the  older  country 
and  also  from  the  West,  and  a  generation  has  now  added 
its  completed  work  to  the  sum.  No  author,  in  this  late 
period,  has  received  the  national  welcome  to  the  same 
degree  as  the  men  of  the  elder  time;  none  has  had  such 
personal  distinction,  eminence  or  public  affection;  and 
none  has  found  such  honorable  favor  abroad,  either  in 
England  or  on  the  Continent.  '  Poetry  has  felt  the  presence 
of  the  art  of  Tennyson,  which  has  maintained  an  extreme 
sensitiveness  among  the  poets  to  artistic  requirements 
of  both  material  and  technique;  and  it  also  has  taken 
color  from  the  later  English  schools.  It  has,  however, 
yielded  its  pre-eminent  position  to  prose.  The  novel  has 
displaced  romance  as  the  highest  form  of  fiction,  and  the 
essay  has  succeeded  the  review  as  the  form  of  criticism. 
The  older  colleges  have  grown  into  universities,  and 
public  libraries  have  multiplied  throughout  the  North  and 
West.  The  literature  of  information,  meant  for  the  popu- 
larization of  knowledge  of  all  kinds,  has  been  put  forth  in 
great  quantity,  and  the  annual  increase  in  the  production 
of  books  keeps  pace  with  the  general  growth  of  the 
country.  Literature  of  distinction,  however,  makes  but 
a  small  part  of  this  large  mass. 


LATER   WRITERS 

In  poetry  the  literary  tradition  was  continued  in  Boston 
by  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich.  (1836-1907),  essentially  a 
stylist  in  verse,  brief,  definite,  delicate,  who  carried  the 
lighter  graces  of  the  art,  refinement,  wit,  polish,  to  a  high 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  295 

point  of  excellence.  His  artistic  consanguinity  is  with 
Herrick  and  Landor,  and  he  takes  motive  and  color  for 
his  verse  from  every  land,  as  his  predecessors  had  done, 
but  with  effects  less  rich.  He  divided  attention  between 
drama  and  lyric,  but  as  his  dramas  look  strictly  to  the 
stage,  it  is  on  the  lyrics  that  his  reputation  rests.  He  was 
master  also  of  an  excellent  prose  and  wrote  novels, 
sketches  of  travel,  and  especially  stories,  strongly  marked 
by  humor,  surprise  and  literary  distinction.  In  New  York, 
Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  (i  833-1 908)  became  the  chief 
representative  of  the  literary  profession.  He  was  both 
poet  and  critic,  and  won  reputation  in  the  former  and 
the  first  rank  in  the  latter  field.  His  "Victorian  Poets" 
(1875)  and  "Poets  of  America"  (1885),  followed  by 
comprehensive  anthologies  (1895,  iQoo)?  together  with 
"The  Nature  and  Elements  of  Poetry"  (1902),  are  the 
principal  critical  work  of  his  generation,  and  indeed 
the  sole  work  that  is  eminent.  His  verse,  less  practised 
as  time  went  on,  was  well  wrought  and  often  distinguished 
by  flashes  of  spiritual  song  and  balladry.  With  him  is 
associated  his  elder  friend,  Richard  Henry  Stoddard 
(182  5-1 903),  who  made  his  appearance  before  the  Civil 
War,  and  whose  verse  belongs  in  general  character  to  the 
style  of  that  earlier  period  and  is  as  rapidly  forgotten. 
Both  Stedman  and  Stoddard  were  of  New  England  birth, 
as  was  also  the  third  to  be  mentioned,  William  Winter 
(born  1836),  better  known  as  the  lifelong  dramatic  critic 
of  the  metropolis.  The  last  of  the  New  York  poets  of 
established  reputation,  Richard  Watson  Gilder  (1844- 
1909),  was  at  first  affiliated  with  the  school  of  Rossetti, 
and  his  work  in  general,  "Five  Books  of  Song"  (1894), 
strongly  marked  by  artistic  susceptibility,  is  in  a  high 
degree  refined  and  delicate.    In  the  country  at  large 


296  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

popular  success,  in  England  as  well  as  in  America,  was 
won  by  Charles  Godfrey  Leland  (182 4-1 903),  in  ''Hans 
Breitmann's  Ballads"  (1871),  humorous  poems  in  the 
Pennsylvania  Dutch  dialect.  Born  in  Philadelphia,  he 
spent  the  greater  part  of  his  mature  Hfe  abroad  and 
wrote  numerous  works  on  diverse  topics,  but  his  reputa- 
tion is  chiefly  connected  with  his  books  on  gypsy  life  and 
lore.  Another  foreign  resident  who  deserves  mention 
was  William  Wetmore  Story  (181 9-1 895),  the  sculptor, 
of  Massachusetts,  connected  with  the  Boston  group, 
whose  verse  and  prose  gave  him  the  rank  of  a  litterateur. 
The  South  again  entered  into  literature  with  the  work  of 
Sidney  Lanier  (i  842-1881),  in  succession  to  Henry  Tim- 
rod  (1829-1867)  and  Paul  Hamilton  Hayne  (1830- 
1886),  who  find  a  place  rather  by  the  affection  in  which 
they  are  held  at  the  South  than  by  positive  merit.  Lanier 
showed  originality  and  a  true  poetic  gift,  but  his  talents 
were  little  effectual.  From  the  West  humorous  poetry 
was  produced  by  Francis  Bret  Harte  (i 839-1902),  born 
in  Albany,  in  "The  Heathen  Chinee"  (1870)  and  similar 
verse,  but  he  is  better  remembered  as  the  artistic  nar- 
rator of  western  mining  life  in  his  numerous  stories  and 
novels.  Verse  of  a  similar  kind  also  first  brought  into 
literary  notice  John  Hay  (183 8-1 905),  in  'Tike  County 
Ballads"  (1871),  who  also  wrote  in  prose;  but  his  repu- 
tation was  rather  won  as  a  statesman  in  the  closing  years 
of  his  life.  Minor  poets  of  less  distinction  but  with  a  vein 
superior  to  that  of  the  earlier  period,  more  excellent  in 
workmanship  and  more  colored  with  imagination  and 
mood,  arose  in  all  parts,  of  whom  the  most  notable  are 
Julia  Ward  Howe  (1819-1910),  in  Boston,  the  venerable 
friend  of  many  good  causes,  Henry  Howell  Brownell 
(1820-1872)  of  Rhode  Island,  author  of  the  most  vigor- 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  297 

ous  and  realistic  poetry  of  the  Civil  War,  "War  Lyrics" 
(1866),  Edward  Rowland  Sill  (i 841-1887),  born  in  Con- 
necticut but  associated  with  California,  Henry  Van  Dyke 
(born  1852),  in  New  York,  better  known  by  his  prose  in 
tale  and  essay,  Silas  Weir  Mitchell  (1830-1914),  in 
Philadelphia,  whose  repute  as  a  novelist  has  overshadowed 
his  admirable  verse,  Eugene  Field  (i  850-1 895)  of  Chi- 
cago, James  Whitcomb  Riley  (1853-19 16),  of  Indiana, 
both  distinguished  for  their  humorous  and  childhood 
verse,  and  Joaquin  Miller  (1841-1913),  of  Oregon,  whose 
first  work,  "ibongs  ot  tne  Sierras"  (1871),  had  in  it 
much  of  the  spirit  of  the  wild  land,  the  color  of  the  desert, 
the  free,  adventurous  character  of  the  filibuster,  all 
strangely  mixed  with  pseudo-Byronic  passions. 

WHITMAN 

Apart  from  all  these,  whether  minor  or  major  poets, 
stands  Walt  Whitman  (181 9-1 892),  whose  "Leaves  of 
Grass"  (1855)  fi^st  appeared  before  the  war,  but  whose 
fame  is  associated  rather  with  its  successive  editions  and 
its  companion  volumes,  and  definitely  dated,  perhaps, 
from  1867.  He  received  attention  in  England,  as  did 
Miller,  on  an  assumption  that  his  works  expressed  the  new 
and  original  America,  the  unknown  democracy,  and  he 
has  had  some  vogue  in  Germany  mainly  owing  to  his 
naturalism.  His  own  countrymen,  however,  steadily  re- 
fuse to  accept  him  as  representative  of  themselves,  and 
his  naturalism  is  uninteresting  to  them,  while  on  the 
other  hand  a  group  apparently  increasing  in  critical 
authority  treat  his  work  as  significant.  It  is,  in  general, 
only  by  those  few  fine  lyrics  which  have  found  a  place  in 
all  anthologies  of  American  verse  that  he  is  well  known 
and  highly  valued  in  his  own  land. 


298  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

THE  LATER   NOVEL 

The  chief  field  of  literary  activity  has  been  found  in 
the  novel,  and  nowhere  has  the  change  been  so  marked  as 
here.  The  romantic  treatment  of  the  novel  practically 
disappeared,  and  in  its  place  came  the  realistic  or  ana- 
lytic treatment,  rendering  manners  by  minute  strokes  of 
observation  or  dissecting  motives  psychologically.  This 
amounted  to  a  substitution  of  the  French  art  of  fiction, 
in  some  of  its  forms,  for  the  English  tradition  of  broad 
reality  and  historical  picturesqueness.  The  protagonist 
of  the  reform  was  William  Dean  Howells  (183 7-1 920),  a 
cultivated  literary  scholar,  and  a  various  writer  of  essays, 
travel  sketches,  poetry  and  plays,  editor  of  many  maga- 
zines and  books,  whose  career  in  letters  has  been  more 
laborious  and  miscellaneous  than  any  other  contemporary, 
but  whose  main  work  has  been  the  long  series  of  novels 
that  he  has  put  forth  almost  annually  throughout  the 
period.  He  not  only  wrote  fiction,  but  he  endeavored  to 
make  known  to  Americans  fiction  as  it  was  practised  in 
other  lands,  Russia,  Italy,  Spain,  and  to  bring  the  art 
that  was  dearest  to  him  into  line  with  the  standard  of  the 
European  world.  He  was  an  apostle  of  the  realistic 
school,  and  directed  his  teaching  to  the  advocacy  of  the 
novel  of  observation,  which  records  life  in  its  conditions 
and  attempts  to  realize  what  is  in  the  daily  lives  and  ex- 
perience of  man  rather  than  what  belongs  to  adventure, 
imagination  or  the  dreaming  part  of  life.  Of  his  works, 
"The  Lady  of  the  Aroostook"  (1879),  ''The  Rise  of 
Silas  Lapham''  (1885),  "A  Hazard  of  New  Fortunes" 
(1889),  are  characteristic  examples.  He  won  a  popular 
vogue,  and  if  it  is  now  less  than  it  was,  it  is  because 
after  a  score  of  years  tastes  and  fashions  change.    The 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  299 

conscientiousness  of  his  art  continues  the  tradition  of 
American  writers  in  that  respect,  and  he  is  master  of  an 
affable  style.  His  work,  including  all  its  phases,  is  the 
most  important  body  of  work  done  in  his  generation. 
Henry  James  (1843-19 16),  who  mainly  resided  abroad, 
is  his  compeer,  and  in  a  similar  way  has  followed  French 
initiative.  He  also  has  been  a  various  writer  of  criticism 
and  travel  and  the  occasional  essay;  but  his  equally  long 
series  of  novels  sustains  his  reputation.  He  has  developed 
the  psychological  treatment  of  fiction,  and  of  his  work 
"The  Portrait  of  a  Lady"  (1881),  "The  Princess  Casa- 
massima"  (1886)  and  "The  Tragic  Muse"  (1890)  are 
characteristic.  He  has  had  less  vogue  owing  to  both 
matter  and  style,  but  in  certain  respects  his  power,  more 
intellectual  than  that  of  Howells,  has  greater  artistic 
elements,  while  the  society  with  which  he  deals  is  more 
complex.  He  is  really  a  cosmopolitan  writer  and  has  no 
other  connection  with  America  than  the  accident  of 
birth.  A  third  novelist,  also  a  foreign  resident,  Francis 
Marion  Crawford  (1854-1909),  falls  into  the  same 
category.  A  prolific  novelist,  in  the  beaten  track  of 
story-telling,  he  has  always  a  story  to  tell  and  excellent 
narrative  power.  The  work  regarded  as  most  important 
from  his  hand  is  "Saracinesa"  (1887)  and  its  sequels; 
but  his  subjects  are  cosmopolitan,  his  talent  is  personal, 
and  he  has  no  effectual  connection  with  his  own  country. 
The  romantic  tradition  of  the  older  times  was  continued 
by  Lew  Wallace  (182 7-1905)  of  Indiana,  a  distinguished 
general  and  diplomat,  in  his  Mexican  tale  "The  Fair  God" 
(1873),  and  his  oriental  romances,  "Ben  Hur"  (1880), 
one  of  the  most  widely  circulated  of  American  books,  and 
"The  Prince  of  India"  (1893).  A  mode  of  the  novel 
which   was  wholly  imique  was  practised   by   Francis 


300  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

Richard  Stockton  (i  834-1 902)  in  his  droll  tales,  of  whicK 
"Rudder  Grange"  (1879)  is  the  best  known. 

The  principal  minor  product  of  the  novel  lay  in  the  pro- 
vincial tale.  The  new  methods  easily  lent  themselves  to 
the  portraiture  of  local  conditions,  types  and  color.  Every 
part  of  the  country  had  its  writers  who  recorded  its 
traits  in  this  way.  For  New  England  Mrs.  Harriet 
Beecher  Stowe  (i  812-1896),  described  the  older  life  in 
"Old  Town  Folks"  (1896),  and  was  succeeded  by  Sarah 
Orne  Jewett  (i  849-1 909)  and  Mary  Eleanor  Wilkins 
(born  1862).  The  West  was  notably  treated  by  Edward 
Eggleston  (183  7-1 902)  in  "The  Hoosier  School  Master" 
(1871),  Mary  Halleck  Foote  (born  1847)  in  "Led-HorSe 
Claim"  (1883)  and  Hamlin  Garland  (born  i860)  in 
"Main  Traveled  Roads"  (1891).  The  South  was  repre- 
sented by  Mary  Noailles  Murfee  ["Charles  Egbert  Crad- 
dock"]  (born  1850)  in  "In  the  Tennessee  Mountains" 
(1884)  and  its  successors,  by  Thomas  Nelson  Page  (born 
1853)  in  "Marse  Chan"  (1887)  and  other  tales  of  the  re- 
construction in  Virginia,  and  with  most  literary  grace  by 
George  Washington  Cable  (born  1844),  whose  novels  of 
Louisiana  are  remarkable  for  their  poetic  charm.  The 
list  is  sufficiently  illustrative  of  the  general  movement, 
which  made  what  was  called  the  dialect  novel  supreme  for 
the  season.  This  was  succeeded  by  a  revival  of  the  his- 
torical novel  in  local  fields,  of  which  Winston  Churchill 
(born  1 871)  in  "Richard  Carvel"  (1899)  is  the  leading 
exponent,  and  together  with  it  the  sword  and  dagger  tale 
of  the  Dumas  type,  the  special  contemporary  plot  in- 
vented by  Anthony  Hope,  and  romance  in  its  utmost 
forms  of  adventure  and  extravagance,  came  in  like  a  flood 
at  the  close  of  the  Spanish  War.  There  were  during  the 
period  from  1870  to  1900  many  other  writers  of  fiction, 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  301 

who  often  proceeded  in  conventional  and  time-honored 
ways  to  tell  their  tale,  but  none  of  them  is  especially  sig- 
nificant for  the  general  view  or  as  showing  any  tendencies 
of  an  original  sort.  The  pietistic  novel,  for  example,  was 
produced  with  immense  popularity  by  Edward  Payson 
Roe  (1838-1888),  who  shared  the  same  vogue  as  Josiah 
Gilbert  Holland  (1819-1881),  and  both  fell  heir  to  the 
same  audience  which  in  the  earlier  period  had  welcomed 
"The  Wide,  Wide  World"  with  the  same  broad  acceptance^ 


ESSAYISTS 

The  essay,  and  the  miscellaneous  work  which  may  be 
classed  with  it,  was  cultivated  with  most  distinction  by 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  (i 823-191 1),  one  of  the 
Boston  group,  a  writer  of  the  greatest  versatility,  as  in 
his  life  he  followed  many  emplo5mients,  from  that  of 
preaching  in  a  Unitarian  pulpit  to  that  of  commanding  a 
negro  regiment  in  the  Civil  War.  He  has  written  good 
verse  and  excellent  prose,  and  his  familiar  style,  often 
brilliant  with  life  and  wit,  especially  becomes  the  social 
essay  or  reminiscent  paper  in  which  he  excelled,  and  gives 
agreeableness  to  his  writings  in  every  form.  "Atlantic 
Essays"  (1871)  is  a  characteristic  book;  and,  in  general, 
in  his  volumes  is  to  be  found  a  valuable  fund  of  remi- 
niscence about  the  literature  and  the  times  of  his  long 
life,  not  elsewhere  so  abundant  or  entertaining.  Charles 
Dudley  Warner  (1829-1900)  of  Hartford,  also  in  close 
touch  in  the  latter  years  with  the  Boston  group,  was  more 
gifted  with  gentle  humor  and  of  a  literary  temperament 
that  made  the  social  essay  his  natural  expression.  He 
won  popularity  by  "My  Summer  in  a  Garden"  (1870), 


302  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

and  was  the  author  of  many  volumes  of  travel  and  several 
novels,  but  the  familiar  essay,  lighted  with  humor  and 
touched  with  a  reminiscence  of  the  Irving  quality  in 
sentiment,  was  his  distinctive  work.  The  long  life  of 
Edward  Everett  Hale  (182  2-1 909),  minister  at  Boston, 
was  fruitful  in  many  miscellaneous  volumes,  including 
fiction  of  note,  "The  Man  Without  a  Country"  (1868), 
but  the  most  useful  writing  from  his  pen  falls  into  prose 
resembling  the  essay  in  its  form  and  manner  of  address, 
though  cousin,  too,  to  the  sermon.  John  Burroughs 
(born  1837)  of  New  York  carried  on  in  essay  form  the 
nature  tradition  of  Thoreau,  touched  with  Emersonianism 
in  the  thought,  and  after  his  example  books  of  mingled 
observation,  sentimlent  and  literary  quality,  with  an  out- 
of-door  atmosphere,  have  multiplied. 


HUMOR 

American  humor  often  cultivates  a  form  akin  to  the 
essay,  but  it  also  falls  into  the  mold  of  the  tale  or  scene 
from  life.  In  the  period  before  the  Civil  War,  to  sum 
up  the  whole  subject  in  this  place,  it  had  the  traits  which 
it  has  since  maintained,  as  its  local  tang,  of  burlesque, 
extravaganza,  violence,  but  it  recorded  better  an  actual 
state  of  manners  and  scene  of  life  in  raw  aspects.  Its 
noteworthy  writers  were  Seba  Smith  (i  792-1 868)  of 
Maine,  author  of  the  "Letters  of  Major  Jack  Downing," 
which  began  to  appear  in  the  press  in  1830;  Augustus 
Baldwin  Longstreet  of  Georgia  in  "Georgia  Scenes" 
(1835);  William  Tappan  Thompson  (1812-1882),  born 
in  Ohio  but  associated  with  the  South  by  descent  and 
residence,    in    "Major    Jones'    Courtship"    (1840),    a 


AN  ENCYCLOPEDIC  VIEW  303 

Georgian  publication;  Joseph  G.  Baldwin  (181 5-1864)  in 
"Flush  Times  in  Alabama  and  Mississippi"  (1853);  and 
Benjamin  Penhallow  Shillaber  (i 814-1890)  in  "Life  and 
Sayings  of  Mrs.  Partington"  (1854).  A  fresh  form, 
attended  by  whimsicality,  appears  in  George  Horatio 
Derby's  (1823-1861)  "Phoenixiana"  (1855).  In  the  war- 
times Robert  Henry  Newell  (183  6-1 901)  and  David  Ross 
Locke  (1833-1888),  respectively  known  as  "Orpheus 
C.  Kerr"  and  "Petroleum  V.  Nasby,"  cultivated  grotesque 
orthography  in  a  characteristic  vein  of  wit;  and  with  more 
quaintness  and  drollery  Henry  Wheeler  Shaw  (1818- 
1885)  ^nd  Charles  Farrar  Browne  (i 834-1 867),  known 
as  "Josh  Billings"  and  "Artemus  Ward,"  won  immense 
popularity  which  extended  to  England.  These  latter 
writers  were  men  of  Northern  birth,  but  of  western  and 
wandering  journalistic  experience  as  a  rule.  Their  works 
make  up  a  body  of  what  is  known  as  "American  humor," 
a  characteristic  native  product  of  social  conditions  and 
home  talent.  One  poet,  John  Godfrey  Saxe  (181 6-1 887) 
of  Vermont,  attempted  something  similar  in  literary  verse 
after  the  style  of  Tom  Hood.  The  heir  to  this  tradition 
of  farce,  drollery  and  joke  was  Samuel  Langhorne 
Clemens  (183 5-1 9 10),  known  as  "Mark  Twain,"  born 
in  Missouri,  who  raised  it  to  an  exffaWdinary'  Hefglit  ^^^^ 
success  and  won  world-wide  reputation  as  a  great  and 
original  humorist.  His  works,  however,  include  a  broader 
compass  of  fiction,  greater  humanity  and  reality,  and  ally 
him  to  the  masters  of  humorous  creation.  Joel  Chandler 
Harris  (1848- 1908)  of  Georgia  introduced  a  new  variety 
in  "Nights  with  Uncle  Remus"  (1883),  which  is  literary 
negro  folklore,  and  Findley  Peter  Dunne  (born  1857) 
of  Chicago,  the  creator  of  "Mr.  Dooley,"  continues  the 
older  American  style  in  its  original  traits. 


304  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

HISTORY 

History  was  represented  in  this  period  with  a  distinc- 
tion not  inferior  to  that  of  the  elder  group  by  Francis 
Parkman  (182 3-1 863)  of  Boston,  who,  however,  really 
belongs  with  the  preceding  age  by  his  affiliations;  his 
series  of  histories  fell  after  the  Civil  War  by  their  dates 
of  publication,  but  they  began  with  "History  of  the  Con- 
spiracy of  Pontiac"  (1851);  he  was  the  contemporary  of 
Lowell  and  differed  from  the  other  members  of  the  elder 
group,  who  survived,  only  by  the  fact  of  the  later 
maturing  of  his  work.  He  was  not  less  eminent  than 
Motley  and  Prescott  and  his  history  is  of  a  more  modern 
type.  In  the  next  generation  the  field  of  American  history 
was  cultivated  by  many  scholars,  and  a  large  part  of 
local  history  and  of  national  biography  was  for  the  first 
time  recorded.  James  Ford  Rhodes's  (born  1848)  "His- 
tory of  the  United  States"  (1892)  holds  standard  rank; 
the  various  writings  of  John  Fiske  (1842-1901),  distin- 
guished also  as  a  philosophical  writer,  in  the  colonial  and 
revolutionary  periods  are  valued  both  for  scholarship  and 
for  excellent  literary  style;  and  Theodore  Roosevelt's 
(1858-1919)  "The  Winning  of  the  West"  (1889)  and  his 
several  biographical  studies  deserve  mention  by  their 
merit  as  well  as  for  his  eminent  position.  The  historians, 
however,  have  seldom  sought  literary  excellence,  and  their 
works  belong  rather  to  learning  than  to  literature.  The 
same  statement  is  true  of  the  scholarship  of  the  uni- 
versities in  general,  where  the  spirit  of  literary  study  has 
changed.  In  the  department  of  scholarship  little  requires 
mention  beyond  Horace  Howard  Furness's  (1833-1912) 
life-long  work  on  his  "Variorum  Edition  of  Shakespeare," 
the  Shakespearian  labors  of  Henry  Norman  Hudson 


AN   ENCYCLOPEDIC   VIEW  305 

(1814-1886)  and  Richard  Grant  White  (1821-1885), 
the  Chaucerian  studies  of  Thomas  Raynesford  Lounsbury 
( 1 838-1 91 5)  of  Yale,  and  the  translations  of  Dante 
(1867,  1892)  by  Charles  Eliot  Norton  (182  7-1 908)  of 
Harvard. 


MODERN  IDEAS 

The  perioQ  has  been  one  of  great  literary  activity, 
effort  and  ambition,  but  it  affects  one  by  its  mass  rather 
than  its  details;  it  presents  few  eminent  names.  The  ro- 
mantic motives  fixed  in  early  colonizing  history  as  a 
taking  possession  of  the  land  by  a  race  of  Puritans, 
pioneers,  river- voyagers,  backwoodsmen,  argonauts,  have 
been  exhausted;  and  no  new  motives  have  been  found. 
The  national  tradition  has  been  absorbed  and  incor- 
porated, so  far  as  literature  was  able  to  accomplish  this. 
The  national  character  on  the  other  hand  has  been  ex- 
pressed rather  in  local  types,  the  color  of  isolated  com- 
munities and  provincial  conditions  for  their  picturesque 
value  and  human  truth,  and  in  commonplace  characters 
of  average  life;  but  no  broadly  ideal  t5^es  of  the  old  Eng- 
lish tradition  have  been  created,  and  the  great  scene  of 
life  has  not  been  staged  after  the  manner  of  tlie  imagina- 
tive masters  of  the  past.  There  has  been  no  product  of 
ideas  since  Emerson;  he  was,  indeed,  the  sole  author  who 
received  and  fertilized  ideas  as  such,  and  he  has  had  no 
successor.  America  is,  in  truth,  perhaps  intellectually 
more  remote  from  Europe  than  in  its  earlier  days.  The 
contact  of  its  romanticism  with  that  of  Europe  was,  as  has 
been  seen,  imperfect,  but  its  touch  with  the  later  develop- 
ments and  reactions  of  the  movement  in  Europe  is  far 
more  imperfect.    With  Tolstoy,  Ibsen,  D'Annunzio,  Zola, 


3o6  AMERICAN   LITERATURE 

Nietzsche,  Maeterlinck,  Sudermann,  the  American  people 
can  have  no  effectual  touch;  their  social  tradition  and  cul- 
ture make  them  impenetrable  to  the  present  ideas  of 
Europe  as  they  are  current  in  literary  forms.  Nor  has 
anything  been  developed  from  within  that  is  fertile  in 
literature.  The  political  unity  of  the  nation  is  achieved, 
but  it  is  not  an  integral  people  in  other  respects.  It  has 
not  the  unity  of  England  or  France  or  even  of  the  general 
European  mind;  it  rather  contains  such  disparate  elements 
as  characterize  the  Roman  or  the  Turkish  empire.  It  is 
cleft  by  political  tradition  and  in  social  moral  conviction, 
North  and  South,  and  by  intellectual  strata  of  culture  East 
and  West;  it  is  still  a  people  in  the  making.  Its  literature 
has  been  regional,  as  was  said,  centered  in  New  England, 
New  York,  Philadelphia,  contributed  to  sporadically  from 
the  South,  growing  up  in  Western  districts  like  Indiana 
or  germinating  in  Louisville  in  Kentucky,  abundant  in 
California,  but  always  much  dependent  on  the  culture  of 
its  localities;  it  blends  to  some  extent  in  the  minds  of  the 
national  reading  public,  but  not  very  perfectly.  The 
universities  had  not,  on  the  whole,  been  its  sources  or 
fosterers,  and  they  are  now  filled  with  research,  useful  for 
learning  but  impotent  for  literature. 


THE  END 


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DEC  26  1933 


MKi  g^  ^^*^ 


btP     Iti    U>ii* 


137^ 


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MAW   14  1939 


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LD  21-100jn-7,'33 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


